


the pull of you

by danceanthems



Category: SKAM (Italy)
Genre: F/M, Soulmate AU, warning: eating disorders/disordered eating
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-03-10 00:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18927409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceanthems/pseuds/danceanthems
Summary: Just because Edoardo Incanti is her soulmate doesn't mean Eleonora Sava likes him. In fact, it doesn't mean anything at all.Or: a universe in which, once you turn seventeen, any marks written on your soulmate's skin appear on your own.





	1. WEEK 1

**Author's Note:**

> Wow! This fic ended up much, much longer and more involved than I was expecting. I'm planning to update regularly (1-2 times per week), but hope you will all be understanding if the demands of life and work, etc. get in the way!
> 
> WARNINGS:  
> This fic does deal with eating disorders/disordered eating in more detail than the canon show does. While this chapter is fairly light on that content, later chapters will be more explicit (but not graphic in descriptions of disordered behaviors). I will do my best to warn accordingly before each chapter.

  
**PRELUDE  
TUESDAY, JANUARY 1  
10:36**  
  
There’s a phone number written on Eleonora’s hand when she wakes up on New Year’s Day. The sun streaming through Eva’s windows stings her eyes and her mouth is dry as hell, but still Eleonora is positive she didn’t get drunk enough last night to forget some dude scrawling his number on her palm in what looks like permanent marker. Besides, much to Silvia’s chagrin, last night had just been the girls, drinking wine in their pajamas at Eva’s house and watching horror movies. Besides one tipsy, giggly trip to the nearest convenience store for more snacks, the only man present all night was Eva’s dad, who had fallen asleep on the couch at 9PM.  
  
One of the girls must have written it on her hand after she’d fallen asleep as a joke. She wonders whose number it is. Maybe that water polo player Eva wants to set her up with.  
  
The vision in the mirror awaiting her once she manages to disentangle herself from between still-sleeping Silvia and Federica on the floor and stumble to the bathroom isn’t pretty. The bags under her eyes are deep enough to swallow a small planet, and her hair looks like a rat’s nest. Avoiding her own face in the mirror, she chooses to look down at her hands as she washes them.  
  
And washes them, and washes them. The phone number doesn’t budge an inch.  
  
-  
  
It takes her about half an hour to get home, her heart in her throat the entire time. Filo is still snoring when she noisily bangs into his room and jumps onto his bed.  
  
“Die,” he mumbles into his pillow.  
  
“Look!” Eleonora shoves her hand in his face. He slaps it away, so she grabs a pillow and hits him with it before forcing her palm in front of him again.  
  
“Nori, I’ll care about whatever mediocre man gave you his number after I’ve had my coffee,” he groans, flopping onto his back and staring at the ceiling.  
  
“Filo, nobody gave me their number last night.”  
  
“What the fuck are you talking about?”  
  
“I mean, this number _wasn’t_ written on _my_ hand,” she says meaningfully.  
  
That catches Filo’s attention enough for him to stop pretending to dramatically scream into his mattress, and he sits up. “Wait,” he says, reaching out for her hand and examining it. “Seriously?”  
  
“It won’t wash off. And I was at Eva’s all night, I’m sure this isn’t mine.”  
  
Filo huffs. “This is so unfair. You turned seventeen, like, a _week_ ago and already have your soulmate, and I’ve heard nothing of mine in five years—”  
  
Eleonora bites her lip. “What should I do? Write something back?”  
  
A devilish grin spreads over Filo’s face and, in a flash, he’s grabbing his phone from his nightstand and typing the number on her hand into it. Before she can even think to protest, his phone is on speaker mode and it’s _ringing_.  
  
“Hello?” Filo’s eyes go comically wide and Eleonora feels like her heart actually, fully stops beating for a moment at the sound of a distinctly feminine voice speaking in English. They stare at each other for a few long seconds before the voice prompts again, “Um, hello?”  
  
“Uh, hi!” Filo says, too-loud and awkward, his English a little stilted. Eleonora’s face feels very red. “Who is this?”  
  
“Who is _this_?” the voice asks back, sounding slightly offended at being badgered by whoever called her, and before Filo can answer Eleonora snatches his phone away and ends the call, suddenly too embarrassed to meet her soulmate in such a terrible way. Over the _phone_ , and with her brother listening.  
  
“My soulmate is British?” she says weakly, burying the lede slightly. It’s not like she’s never considered whether she was attracted to women, but the whole idea had always seemed more hypothetical than anything, not something that needed to be thought about too hard, and she had never wanted to seem like she was copying Filo or trying to steal his spotlight, and—  
  
“Hey,” Filo says, probably recognizing the classic Eleonora Freaking Out situation occurring all over her face. “As happy as I would be to welcome you to the light side, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This girl’s not your soulmate—why would she write her own number on her hand?”  
  
Eleonora pauses, thinks about it, and deflates a little. She rubs her eyes. Her brain hurts, possibly from all the red wine still lingering in her system, or the eventful morning, or both. Being hungover makes her dumb, apparently. “I need coffee,” she grumbles.  
  
“You’re not the only one,” Filo mutters, fiddling with his phone. “But there’s still work to be done.” She leans her head on his shoulder and corrects his English as he types into WhatsApp.  
  
**Filippo Incanti:** Sorry to bother you but your number showed up on my hand  
**Filippo Incanti:** Do you remember who you wrote it on last night?  
**Unknown:** Lol  
**Unknown:** No worries  
**Unknown:** Lucky you, he was hot  
**Unknown:** Italian  
  
Filo waggles his eyebrows at Eleonora, who is feeling flushed all over again.  
  
**Filippo Incanti:** Has he called you?  
**Unknown:** No, his friend said something about him having a girlfriend  
**Unknown:** Whatever  
**Filippo Incanti:** Sorry  
**Filippo Incanti:** Did you get his name?  
**Unknown:** It’s ok plenty of fish in the sea  
**Unknown:** Ugh I was completely pissed  
**Unknown:** Maybe Eduardo?  
  
-  
  
**MONDAY, JANUARY 7  
15:04**  
  
Being back at school after a semester in Manchester feels like slipping on a sweater that no longer fits perfectly. The hallways feel unfamiliar and claustrophobic, and her brain, counterintuitively, feels slower now that she no longer has to internally translate every class lecture. Her classes are harder this semester, too. On the whole, it has been a very long and tiring day, but her heart lifts when she enters the courtyard and sees her friends standing in a circle, chatting about—who knows what.  
  
“Did you see his Instagram post? Wish we could afford to travel just to party,” Silvia is saying when Eleonora walks up. She sounds gloomy.  
  
“Going to London just for one weekend seems like a waste, though,” Sana replies. She has a stack of papers in her hand and is flipping through them, bored.  
  
“We should save up and do the same next year,” Fede says anyway, grabbing Eva’s hand. “We could go to Barcelona, or Berlin! Or Dublin, or—”  
  
“Who went to London for a weekend?” Eleonora asks. A thought is lingering in the corner of her mind, but she shoves it away, just like she has every single day for the past week. The odds are small, infinitesimally small, _microscopic_.  
  
“The Villa Boys,” Silvia says, pulling out her phone, and the lingering thought comes screeching back into Eleonora’s consciousness, sirens blaring. Edoardo Incanti was in London for New Year’s. Eleonora has a British girl’s number written on her hand. As Silvia opens up Instagram and shows her a picture of Edoardo and Fede in front of a sketchy-looking mural of a Union Jack, obnoxiously geo-tagged London, as if it’s _trying_ to rub her nose in it, Eleonora’s heart speeds up so much that she’s afraid it might eject itself from her chest at any minute.  
  
Of course, it had been the first paranoid, traitorous thought to occur to her when Hannah—as British girl, and Filo’s new penpal, is actually known—texted the name Eduardo. Certainly, the universe could not be so cruel as to curse her with a soulmate named after her nemesis. And the thought of her soulmate actually _being_ her nemesis—Eleonora refused to even consider it. According to her research, there are approximately 300,000 men in Italy named Eduardo or Edoardo. Even accounting for the newborn and the elderly, that’s still too many people to make it even _remotely_ in the _neighborhood_ of possible that he could be— that they were—  
  
A new Google search springs to mind. _How many people named Edoardo or Eduardo spent New Year’s Eve in London._ It had to be more than one, she thought. Maybe more than a hundred.  
  
“Okay, Ele?” Eva asks. Silvia and Fede are chattering excitedly about potential holiday spots for next year, and Eleonora realizes she’s been staring, slack-jawed, at a picture of Edoardo and Federico for an uncomfortable amount of time.  
  
“Fine—” she says, a little too quickly and a little too high-pitched, snapping her chin up to look determinedly _not_ at Silvia’s phone.  
  
Unfortunately, her gaze runs straight into the source of the entire problem.  
  
He’s with his friends, of course, and they’re all laughing about something as if it’s the funniest thing in the world and shoving each other and slapping each other on the back. It’s been six months since she’s seen him in person, and she lets her gaze linger on his curls, longer than before, and his hands, gesticulating wildly as he tells some story. She hates him and his stupid hair and his obnoxious, long, constantly-texting-her-for-months fingers so, _so_ much.  
  
For one instant, his gaze locks on hers and Eleonora immediately feels caught, like a deer in the headlights, frozen on the spot. His eyebrows raise and it looks like he stops talking, maybe in the middle of a sentence, and his smile broadens—  
  
Eleonora registers a quick intake of breath from Silvia and turns her gaze to her friend immediately, her brain suddenly foggy. _Three hundred thousand people,_ her brain repeats, a useless mantra, _three hundred thousand Eduardos_ , as Silvia whispers about how handsome he looks with his hair longer and has he gotten even taller and she loves his sweater, it brings out his eyes. _Three hundred thousand people, and thousands of bars in London. British girl was wasted, she probably got the name wrong. Or she was right, and your soulmate’s name is_ Eduardo, _and apparently he has a girlfriend, and—_  
  
Her phone buzzes.  
  
**Edoardo Incanti:** Hello there  
**Edoardo Incanti:** Long time no see  
**Edoardo Incanti:** Eleonora Francesca Sava  
  
-  
  
**TUESDAY, JANUARY 8  
13:11**  
  
Eleonora is in chemistry class, frantically trying to scribble down everything her teacher is saying about balancing reactions, when Sana pokes her in the side. Confused, she keeps taking notes until Sana’s elbow is basically lodged in her ribs. “What?” she whispers out of the side of her mouth. Sana never talks during class.  
  
Sana gestures towards Ele’s hands, and so she looks down and sees—blue. Three fingers of her left hand are blue, and there are splotches of blue on her palm, and one at the base of her thumb.  
  
The skin of her left hand tingles, strangely warm. She flexes her hand once, twice, as if willing a hallucination to dissipate, but the blue stains remain. When the fingers of her right hand graze over the skin, it feels the same as ever.  
  
“Maybe it’s paint,” Sana suggests, after Eleonora has told her that no, this isn’t the first time this has happened and no, she hasn’t talked to her soulmate and _no_ , she’s not sure she even wants to.  
  
She takes a second to imagine her soulmate as a painter, sitting in a window and bringing a sunset to life. It’s not a bad thought, but— “It looks more like ink.”  
  
Sana shrugs and changes the subject to next week’s chemistry test. Eleonora walks by her side to the courtyard, definitely not hoping for a glimpse of Edoardo Incanti and his hands for any reason whatsoever.  
  
-  
  
**WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9  
14:34**  
  
Eleonora had not been anticipating a long-winded, and mostly unwelcome, speech about her university prospects from her chemistry teacher following class today, and now she’s missed her bus. It’s especially freezing out today, unusual for Rome, and thoughts of the thirty minute walk home in the cold and her plants freezing in their pots on the veranda have her crabby.  
  
She slips her hands—the left still ink-stained, honestly, her soulmate needs to take care of that—into a pair of gloves and is trying to both walk down the stairs and wrestle a long knit scarf out of her backpack when her foot misses a step and she stumbles. Her bag and its contents scatter across the stairs but Ele, at least, manages to catch herself before sustaining serious injury. Today really isn’t her day, she thinks to herself as she crouches to collect all manner of pens, papers, and her scarf from the floor.  
  
“Eleonora?” someone asks above her, and it’s been six months but his voice still makes her stomach clench and then swoop, just like it had moments ago, when she’d missed a step and expected a fall.  
  
It’s _really_ not her day.  
  
“Hi,” she says shortly as she shoves her things back into her bag, drapes her scarf loosely around her neck, and stands. She doesn’t look at him, instead focusing on a nice spot on the wall just above his shoulder. Still, even in her peripheral vision, he’s… his hair is longer, and it makes him look softer, younger. He’s got his hands in the pockets of his pretentious leather jacket and he’s smiling so broadly at her that, after a few moments, it’s physically impossible for her to look away any longer.  
  
“It’s good to see you,” Edoardo says, his gaze travelling from her head to her feet and back in one quick motion. He bites his lip, and Eleonora narrows her eyes. “ _Really_ good.” She can’t begin to unravel the layered meanings he manages to convey with that one statement. It makes her feel a little ill, or faint—no, definitely ill.  
  
“Okay, well,” Eleonora says, trying to push past him to continue down the stairs. He lets her go but follows close behind, and she can feel his presence behind her, warm.  
  
“C’mon, you didn’t miss me once in six months?” he asks, voice edged with amusement. She hates him.  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“Because I missed you.”  
  
“I’m sure you did,” Eleonora replies sarcastically, making a beeline for the door as they reach the first floor, hoping that her face isn’t as red as it feels. It’s not because of him. The school’s heat must be malfunctioning, because she suddenly feels hot all over.  
  
“Hey,” he says, speeding up a little to plant himself between Ele and the exit. He leans against the wall and looks down at her with small smile quirking his lips, and she refuses to give him the satisfaction of making her flustered, or annoyed, or _anything_ , so she crosses her arms and lifts her chin and looks back at him, hard.  
  
He leans forward and whispers conspiratorially, like they share a secret, “I think you may have missed me a little.”  
  
“Why is that?”  
  
“Just a series of text messages I received on Halloween,” he replies, and Eleonora’s heart skips a beat. “Something about you hating my shitty hair, and my face, and maybe my arms?” He’s full-on laughing at her now, eyes twinkling and crinkled at the corners. She fights the urge to look at the ground, to let her hair swing in front of her face and hide the traitorous blush creeping up her cheeks. No, there is no room in this battle for such a blatant surrender.  
  
“I was drunk,” she says, as airily as possible. It isn’t a lie. She’d been wasted, dressed up as a cat, and if, at one point, she had spent ten minutes showing her roommate his texts and continually asking _what does he want from me, what is his problem, what is this feeling in my throat and my wrists and my chest when his name pops up on my phone_ —well, that was none of his business.  
  
“Drunk and thinking about me?”  
  
“Did you need something?” Eleonora asks, voice rising in pitch. She’d forgotten how much she hates how he looks at her, like she's as easy for him to read as a children’s book.  
  
He shrugs, still leaning casually into her space. “How was your break?”  
  
“It was fine.”  
  
“Do anything fun?”  
  
Ele opens her mouth, and closes it again, searching for something to say. “I taught myself to knit,” she says weakly, looking down at her scarf. It’s green. Filo told her it matches the color of her eyes almost exactly.  
  
Edoardo reaches out with one hand and flicks the end of the scarf. “That does sound fun,” he says, smiling at her.  
  
“Ha ha, I’m so boring, I know,” she mutters, finally breaking eye contact to stare at the floor. Not that she cares what Edoardo Incanti thinks of her hobbies, but years of Filo and friends and her mother poking gentle fun at her gardening and sewing and reading—it’s enough to create a sore spot.  
  
“I don’t think you’re boring,” he says, and Eleonora jerks her head up to meet his eyes. “The opposite, really.” He’s wearing the same affable, small smile that he always has when he looks at her, and it just drives her crazy. She wants to crack open his skull and pull out his thoughts like ribbons, read them all, find out _what the hell his deal is—_  
  
Then he rocks back on his heels for a second and takes a step forward, so their toes are almost touching. Eleonora can hear her own breath catch, and can’t believe she’d been so stupid to think that six months away would erase this effect that he has on her, the way just a look from him makes her want to run for blocks and blocks to escape— _this_ , this nothing between them. Maybe because she’d forgotten exactly how his cheeks dimple when he smiles at her, or had just never realized how good he smells. Still, she’d hoped six months would be enough for him to get over this thing he had—his desire for her validation, or whatever.  
  
Instead he’s still here, close enough to make her feel crowded but far enough to be respectful, and he’s taking his hands out of his pockets and reaching for her scarf. Ele moves to slap his hands away but stops, _freezes_ , when she sees—  
  
Blue.  
  
_Blue_.  
  
Three fingers of his left hand are covered in blue ink. She stares, mouth open as if to say something, as he pulls on the end of her scarf, bringing it up to wrap it once, then twice, around her neck. There’s a splotch of blue near the base of his thumb, just like hers. Eleonora stands rooted to the spot, her eyes locked on his stupid, pretty, _blue_ hands, and she swears the edges of her vision begin to blur, and radio static plays in her ears.  
  
Edoardo Incanti is— he’s—  
  
“What happened to your hand?” she manages to say, finally. Her own voice sounds far away, like she’s hearing herself speak through a long tunnel. He’s still standing so close and fiddling with her scarf, tucking in the ends and arranging it so it covers her chin. His thumb brushes her cheek and Eleonora jolts as if shocked, finally looking up at his eyes. He looks surprised, like he can’t believe she hasn’t pushed him away yet. She can’t believe it, either.  
  
“My pen exploded in class yesterday.” He pulls his hand back, finally, to examine it. “Couldn’t get it all off last night.”  
  
Soulmate. Edoardo Incanti is Eleonora Sava’s soulmate.  
  
The static in her ears evolves into a roaring so loud she’s surprised he can’t hear it. She cannot be here, cannot look at him any longer, can’t stand to hear whatever he’s opening his mouth to say right this second—  
  
She pushes past him without a word, her heart slamming against her ribcage. He walks after her again, the fucking— _dickhead_ , she can’t think straight when he is here and when all of the probabilities she calculated were for naught and he is her universe-granted, lifelong-destined soulmate—  
  
“Let me give you a ride home.” His long legs allow him to catch up to her far too quickly, but Ele speedwalks away from him again, shoving her hands—her traitorously blue hands—deep into the pockets of her coat.  
  
“I’ll walk.”  
  
“Ele—”  
  
“ _Don’t_ ,” she snaps, spinning around to glare at him fiercely. He almost runs right into her, and puts a hand on her shoulder to steady himself. She jerks it away. “Don’t call me that.”  
  
The cold air clears her head somewhat when she finally makes it outside. She walks ten, twenty, thirty seconds before chancing a look behind her to see if he’s followed her. But all she can see is his curly head and leather jacket, heading in the opposite direction, walking away.  
  
-  
  
**WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9  
19:15**  
  
Filo has been laughing for two entire minutes. Really. Eleonora has been staring at the clock behind him, counting the seconds as he howls with laughter, collapsed onto their couch.  
  
“It’s not funny,” Ele whines once he’s calmed down a little. That just sets him off again, though, and it’s another minute before he’s composed himself enough to sit up, wiping tears from the corner of his eyes.  
  
“C’mon, Nori, it’s a little funny.”  
  
“Funny that my soulmate is a notorious asshole who’s been harassing me for six months?” She crosses her arms and curls herself further into her chair, all her limbs entangled and compressed as much as possible. Like this, it feels less like everything is moving fast, too fast for her to pause and gather her thoughts and _fix_ this.  
  
Filo rolls his eyes. “You and I both know that if you really wanted him to leave you alone, he’d have gotten the message by now.”  
  
Eleonora ignores this in favor of grabbing her laptop and opening Google. Staring at her hands and wondering what to type, she watches the ink start to fade from her left hand. Somewhere in Rome, Edoardo Incanti is washing his hands, over and over, willing the mess away.  
  
She touches the spot of ink next to her thumb and, briefly, remembers the spark when he had touched her cheek. He’s never touched her before.  
  
_And never will again,_ she thinks stubbornly, typing _how many soulmates end up married_ into the search bar.  
  
“Time for dinner,” Filo says. “Want to get sushi? My treat, for your troubles.”  
  
“I’m not hungry,” Ele murmurs, clicking on the first link that her search returns. Filo is silent for several moments and when she looks up, he’s giving her a Look, with a capital L. She sighs. “Really, Filo, I’ll just make myself something, okay? I promise. There’s food in the kitchen.”  
  
He gives her another long look and then, satisfied with whatever he sees on her face, nods. “Don’t worry too much, little spider,” he says, reaching out to ruffle her hair. “You’ve never met a problem you couldn’t fix.”  
  
-  
  
**THURSDAY, JANUARY 10  
14:40**  
  
Edoardo shows up at the radio studio about ten minutes after she’s finished recording her episode. Her stomach flips, then growls. She’d been too unsettled to eat her lunch without feeling nauseous, and now the double misfortunes of hunger and guilt for skipping a meal are weighing on her. She wants to go home, to sit among her plants and eat where nobody can watch her. She wants to be alone, to sort through her thoughts more, which she can’t do when Edoardo fucking Incanti, her goddamn soulmate, is in the same room.  
  
“I liked this week’s episode,” he says, and she turns to look at him. “You should do more music reviews. You have good taste.”  
  
“Why are you here?”  
  
He leans against the doorway, watching her pack up her things. He’s always fucking watching her.  
  
“We haven’t set up our date yet,” he replies. There’s that smile again. She wonders if it’s a trick he uses on every girl he wants, if he practices it in a mirror, if the others find it maddening too.  
  
Ele scoffs. “We’re not going on a date.”  
  
“Ele—”  
  
“Don’t call me that,” she snaps again. Her head hurts and she can’t stand to look at him or his hands, even though she knows the ink is gone. She knows because it’s gone from hers, too. Because they’re soulmates. “Look, we had a deal, but I’m backing out. Shame on me, bad luck for seven years, whatever. I’m out.”  
  
“This isn’t about the deal, Eleonora.”  
  
“Then tell me what it’s about, _Eduardo_.”  
  
“I like you,” he says. “I want to spend time with you.” He looks so sincere that Ele feels even more nauseous. Maybe because he’s never said it in so many words— _I like you._ There’s plenty to like now, she thinks, when he’s only ever seen her from a distance. But one month, two months from now? He’ll be long gone.  
  
So she says as much. “You don’t even know anything about me.”  
  
“I want to, though.”  
  
“I don’t,” she says, and it’s a lie. She wants to know what goes on inside his head, what’s behind his smiles, so badly that it keeps her up at night. She wants, desperately, to know what he thinks about when he thinks of her, and she hates herself for it. “I don’t want any of this.” She’s mortified to hear her own voice wavering.  
  
He must notice the break in her voice, because his face transforms from its usual smile to a look of concern in under a minute. He takes a step towards her, raising a hand as if to touch her. “Are you okay?”  
  
Eleonora steps away before he can do so, not eager to relive the spark of yesterday, not at all interested in knowing what his hands feel like on her skin. “You’re not my boyfriend,” she says, more harshly than intended. “And you’re not my friend, so just— stop.”  
  
She shoves his shoulder so she can leave before he can respond.  
  
-  
  
**FRIDAY, JANUARY 11  
14:57**  
  
The girls are all already in the café by the time Eleonora arrives, head swimming with dates memorized for her European history test this morning. The café is crowded, a low hum of voices buzzing in the air. The first thing she notices is Silvia, blonde hair tied back, waving Eleonora over to her table. Almost immediately, her eyes slide off of her friend and onto Edoardo, sitting one table away from the girls with his friends and already, of _fucking_ course, looking at her. She doesn’t know how he always manages to be aware of her before she sees him.  
  
Her phone buzzes in her pocket as she zig-zags through tables to make her way to her friends.  
  
**Edoardo Incanti:** I hope you’re having a better day today  
  
Ele scoffs internally and slams her books down onto the table occupied by her friends a little harder than strictly necessary. Eva raises an eyebrow, and Silvia shushes her. The blonde has a phone held to one ear and one finger plugging the other, listening intently.  
  
“What’s she doing?” Ele asks the others.  
  
“Cold-calling businesses looking for sponsorships for the radio,” Sana says, pushing a plate with a croissant towards Ele and motioning for her to take some. “You should hear her pitch voice, it’s great.”  
  
“Any luck?” Ele asks, pushing the plate back towards Sana.  
  
“I’ve been on hold for, like, ten minutes,” Silvia whispers. “With that gelato shop from a block over.”  
  
“It’s only been a few minutes, Sil,” Eva says encouragingly. There’s an explosion of laughter from the boys at the table next to them, and Eleonora watches Eva give Fede a small wave. If Edoardo is still looking at her, she certainly doesn’t see it. Instead, she takes out her chemistry textbook, opens it to the chapter on balancing chemical reactions, and begins to intently pretend to read. Her phone vibrates again before she can even read a word.  
  
**Edoardo Incanti:** You look nice today  
**Edoardo Incanti:** I like your lipstick  
  
Exhaling loudly through her nose, Ele grabs a napkin from the center of the table and drags it over her lips, slowly but surely removing every trace of red lipstick. When she’s sure she’s done, having pulled out a compact mirror to check, she crumples the napkin and drops it on the table.  
  
When she looks up, her friends are all giving her strange looks. “What?” she mutters grumpily, flipping through her textbook. Clearly her dramatic side, which she usually saves only for Filo, had gotten the best of her.  
  
Sana raises an eyebrow. “Everything all right?”  
  
Before she can answer, a voice says, “Ladies.” Federico and Edoardo are standing behind Eva and Sana. Silvia practically chokes on air at the very sight. She’s not the only one—Eleonora notices the way all eyes in the café seem to follow Edoardo. She doesn’t need to check to know where he’s looking. She stares at the same sentence about coefficients and wills him to go away.  
  
“What’s up?” Federica asks, friendly as ever. Ele can feel the anxious energy radiating off of Silvia, sitting next to her.  
  
“We’re having a surprise party for Rocco’s birthday at his place next Friday,” Fede says.  
  
“—And of course, you’re all invited,” Edoardo adds. Silvia gives a high-pitched giggle.  
  
“We’ll be there!” she replies almost immediately, and Ele curses internally. She’ll go to that party when hell freezes over. “It’ll be so much fun— oh— hello?” Silvia plugs her ear with her finger again, listening intently to whoever is on the other line. “Right— yes—”  
  
Clearly flustered by the presence of the immortal Edoardo Incanti or the phone call or all of the above, Silvia makes a frantic motion with her hand until Sana hands her a pen and then scrambles for something to write on and decides, for some godforsaken reason, that Ele’s arm, laying innocently next to her chemistry textbook, is the best option.  
  
Eleonora doesn’t even think to protest as Silvia scribbles _500 euros, 10 advertisements per week, 20 seconds each_ on her forearm.  
  
But she can’t help but glance at Edoardo, who—  
  
Isn’t looking back at her, for once.  
  
He’s looking down at himself, Ele realizes. He’s wearing t-shirt with a stretched-out collar, a silver chain disappearing into it, and a hoodie with the sleeves pushed up. Her eyes trail over him, from his shitty hair to his downcast eyes, his neck, his shoulders, his arms. His forearm.  
  
_500 euros, 10 advertisements per week, 20 seconds each_.  
  
Fede realizes it first. Eleonora can tell, because he laughs loud enough to make half the patrons of the café jump in their chairs. Then Eva claps a hand over her mouth, her eyes comically pinging back and forth between Edoardo and Eleonora, as if she were watching a tennis game.  
  
Eleonora looks up and her eyes meet Edoardo’s for one instant. His eyes are dark, and she can’t understand what she sees in them. She doesn’t understand him. She doesn’t understand any of this, not even a little.  
  
Suddenly, it’s all too much. The shocked noises of her friends, the laughter of the rest of the Villa Boys as they figure everything out, the way Edoardo is examining his arm, running his thumb across the words written there as if they might disappear—all of it makes her skin crawl. Both Fedes are stifling laughs. Eva might be, too, and Silvia looks hurt, or pissed, or both, and Edoardo might be on the verge of saying something, and Eleonora cannot be here anymore.  
  
So she stands, grabs her bag, and flees. She can hear Sana and Eva calling after her, but ignores them, chest tight. It isn’t until she’s three blocks away, her lungs filled with cool air, that she feels like she can breathe again.  
  
-  
  
**SATURDAY, JANUARY 12  
11:04**  
  
When Eleonora answers the door on Saturday morning, she finds Eva carrying her chemistry textbook. “Sana said you have a test next week,” she says, stepping into the Sava’s living room. “I figured you’d want it.”  
  
“Thanks,” Ele says, following after Eva and plopping down on the couch. Her phone buzzes on the coffee table. Eva looks at it, then looks at Ele.  
  
“Are you doing okay?”  
  
Ele laughs, but it sounds hollow and weird. “Doing great,” she replies. Looking down at her lap, she toys with a stray thread from the seam of her pajamas. There are so many things that she wants to say, but as usual, no words come to mind. They just gather at the tip of her tongue and sour, turning to acid that she swallows down as best as she can.  
  
Eva doesn’t seem to buy it. “You know,” she says, slowly, like she’s unsure of how to approach the subject. “He’s not really _so_ bad.”  
  
Eleonora must look some combination of betrayed and horrified—whatever is on her face is enough to make Eva raise her hands defensively and continue, “Look, I’m just saying—he asked about you, a few times, while you were gone.”  
  
“Asked what?”  
  
“What you’re into,” Eva replies, shrugging. “Hobbies, music, I don’t know.”  
  
“What did you tell him?”  
  
“That you like gardening, and nothing more.”  
  
Ele’s phone vibrates on the coffee table again, and then again.  
  
“Are you going to check that?” Eva asks.  
  
“No.” She knows who it is already, and she has no interest in speaking to him now, or maybe ever again. She grabs a pillow and hugs it to her chest, resisting the urge to scream into it. “Was Silvia mad?”  
  
Eva hesitates, and Ele's heart sinks. “You know Silvia,” is all she says. “But she’ll come around,” she adds, trying to look optimistic. “Really, Ele, everything will be okay.”  
  
“I know,” Ele mumbles, sighing. She flexes her hand and realizes, with a start, that it’s tingling. Her breath stops for a second, chest tight. She almost doesn’t want to look, but then—it’s _her_ body. _Her_ life. None of this has to change anything. None of this has to _mean_ anything.  
  
When she flips her hand over to examine her palm, loose cursive is slowly writing its way across her skin.  
  
_We need to talk._


	2. WEEK 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot thank you all enough for the incredibly kind response to this fic so far. Every kudos, comment, and response here and on Tumblr means so very much to me! I haven't written much in a very long time, and to have this received so warmly has truly been amazing.
> 
> WARNINGS: This chapter does contain some minor discussion of hospitalization due to disordered eating.

**MONDAY, JANUARY 14  
14:20**  
  
The second Eleonora had stepped onto school grounds this morning, it became clear that her hope that nobody had heard about Friday’s incident at the café had been dangerously naive. All day, eyes and whispers have followed her down hallways, into bathrooms, echoing from the back of her classrooms—girls who look amused or sympathetic or jealous, boys who have never noticed her before giving her appreciative once-overs.  
  
The attention is nauseating. Ele has never once minded her small group of friends, the fact that she flies under the radar—it’s what she prefers, at the end of the day. Today, all she can think about is what people are saying about her, what they’re thinking as their eyes slide over her. She’s always tried her best to control what people see, know, think of her. Red lipstick, good grades, the radio feminist. All that’s gone up in smoke. She’s never felt less in control in her life.  
  
She hasn’t seen a friendly face all day, and so when she walks into the café and sees Eva sitting with Martino and Niccolò and Gio, she swears it feels like the first time all day that she can truly breathe.  
  
“The woman of the hour,” Nico says as she joins them, and Ele grimaces.  
  
Eva places a hand on Eleonora’s head, patting her hair. “Edoardo was here looking for you,” she says. “You just missed him.”  
  
Ele groans and rubs her hands over her face as best she can without displacing her makeup. Eva’s fingers scratch her scalp at the base of her neck. “What did you tell him?” she asks, muffled slightly.  
  
“That you’d already gone home,” Martino replies from across the table. Ele brings her hands down and gives him a little smile, grateful. “I don’t think he believed us, though,” he adds.  
  
As if on cue, a familiar tingling heats the base of Eleonora’s palm, continuing to her wrist. _You can’t avoid me forever, you know._ She pulls the sleeve of her sweater over her hand, obscuring the message from everyone.  
  
“Edoardo Incanti is looking for you,” Elia interrupts, tossing his stuff on the floor and nodding at Eleonora as he sits.  
  
“It’s like a full-on search party,” Gio snarks, and Eva laughs.  
  
“This is my own personal hell,” Eleonora says.  
  
Elia scoffs. “What’s the issue? He’s beautiful, you’re beautiful, be beautiful together for eternity. You cannot imagine the problems of us common folk, ugly and soulmate-less.”  
  
“He’s an asshole,” Ele replies heatedly, doing her best to not think about the look of concern that had crossed his face in the radio studio, when he’d thought she was upset. “He treats women like shit, he can’t take no for an answer, he thinks the whole world should just bend to his whim because he’s rich and—”  
  
She cuts herself off when her wrist starts tingling again. _Are you still at school?_ When she looks up, Eva is staring at the message with a raised eyebrow.  
  
“This was so much easier when I could just not read his text messages,” Ele says, verging on a whine, and Eva laughs.  
  
“Wait,” Nico says, raising a hand. “So you two were already a thing? Even before this?”  
  
Before Eleonora can vehemently deny it, Eva pipes up. “He’s been obsessed with Ele since she told him he has a small dick in front of all his friends last spring.”  
  
Gio and Elia do identical spit-takes, and Martino laughs so loud he gets a dirty look from the barista. “That is _not_ what I said,” Ele mumbles, blushing.  
  
“Who knew Edoardo Incanti has a humiliation kink,” Elia muses as he mops up the coffee he just sprayed all over the table. Eleonora’s safe haven is rapidly disintegrating before her eyes.  
  
“Can we talk about something, anything else?” she begs. Eva, taking pity on her, gives Ele one last pat on the shoulder before returning to the math assignment laid out before her. Gio and Elia and Martino all shrug and start chatting about a FIFA tournament they’re apparently planning.  
  
“Hey.” Eleonora turns her head and looks at Nico. She doesn’t know him very well—it’s only been a few weeks since they met for the first time. Still, he’s looking at her kindly. “Speaking as somebody who has his soulmate…” he says, and his eyes drift to Martino, who is gesticulating wildly as he argues with Elia about their relative likelihoods of victory in the tournament. There’s so much fondness in his gaze that Ele wants to look away. “Maybe give the guy a chance before you write him off.” Ele wrinkles her nose, and Nico laughs when he looks back at her and sees. “I’m just saying, it’s pretty special.” He smiles at her. “You seem great. You deserve this, too.”  
  
Ele can’t imagine ever looking at Edoardo Incanti so affectionately. Most of the time she can’t stand to look at him for longer than a few seconds, for fear of what she might find.  
  
Still, Nico is just being nice. So she gives him a small smile and nods, and drinks her coffee silently.  
  
-  
  
**TUESDAY, JANUARY 15  
12:31**  
  
The intensity of the attention being paid to her has made all of Eleonora’s usual study spots inaccessible. Yesterday the baristas at the café had stopped talking as soon as she’d approached the counter to ask for a glass of water, refusing to make eye contact with her. Nobody in the courtyard even bothers hiding the fact that they’re giggling when she passes anymore. She swears even her teachers know what’s going on, judging by their newfound desire to ask her _is everything going all right?_  
  
So she is holed up in an empty classroom for lunch, her chemistry notes laid out in front of her, wanting only to be alone and try to work her way through the eggplant pasta she’d made herself last night.  
  
Of course that means Edoardo finds her in under ten minutes. Ele sees his curls poke into the doorway and he looks around, his eyes lighting up when his gaze stops on her. “There you are,” he says happily, stepping into the classroom and heading her way. He drops his stuff next to her desk and sits across from her, straddling a chair backwards and drumming his fingers on the tabletop. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”  
  
“Couldn’t take a hint?” she mutters under her breath, chewing slowly and avoiding his eyes.  
  
“Eleonora,” he says, ducking his head in an attempt to make eye contact with her. Even though she’d asked him not to call her Ele, she decides in that moment that she might hate the sound of her full name on his lips even more.  
  
She takes a deep breath, steels herself, and meets his eyes. “I need to study.”  
  
“What for?” He fiddles with one page of her notes, flipping it around so he can read it.  
  
“I have a chemistry test tomorrow.”  
  
She stares at his hands as he returns her notes to their original position, recognizing the faded marks of his attempts to contact her over the past few days scrawled here and there. “Chemistry’s not so important, no?”  
  
Ele rolls her eyes and returns to staring at her pasta like it’s the most fascinating dish in the world. “It is when you want to be a science teacher.”  
  
“I didn’t know that.”  
  
“Well, you don’t know most things about me.”  
  
“I would have figured you more for a lawyer,” he says, and Eleonora wrinkles her nose. “Journalist.” She glances at him, and can see in the quirk of his lips that he’s making fun of her. “Professional ball-buster?” She tries, and fails, to bite down on the smile forcing its way onto her face, and is rewarded with a full-on grin. It’s… well, this would all be a lot easier, Ele thinks, if he didn’t look like… _that_. “We really should talk, though,” he adds quietly, still smiling.  
  
“About what?” She’s playing dumb and he knows it.  
  
“About the long life journey we’re about to embark on together.”  
  
His tone is joking, but Ele’s throat suddenly feels dry anyway. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” she mumbles, straightening her papers so the edges line up perfectly.  
  
“We’re soulmates,” he says flatly, and Eleonora can’t help but stare at him. This would all be a lot easier, she thinks again, if he didn’t get under her skin like this, make her feel so… _so_ … “Thoughts?”  
  
He definitely doesn’t need to know about the fact that, when Ele was eight, she told her mom that she’d never even _think_ of dating someone who wasn’t her soulmate. Filo still makes fun of her for that to this day. “I didn’t peg you for one to care about his soulmate in the first place, honestly,” Ele says, avoiding the question. She doesn’t know what to do with him when he’s sincere.  
  
“Maybe I’m a romantic,” Edoardo replies, charming voice activated. She’s grateful, if only because it makes it easier to roll her eyes and slip back into what’s more comfortable.  
  
“I’m sure all those tick marks on your wall think so.”  
  
He runs a hand through his hair and finally, blessedly, looks away from her. “You really are tough.”  
  
“Well, color me annoyed that my supposed— _whatever_ treats women like garbage,” Ele says, not sure if they’re still bantering or not.  
  
“Look, I’m not saying it was a nice thing to do,” he says. Ele snorts. “But sleeping around doesn’t mean I treat girls like shit, Ele.”  
  
“No, but fucking random girls you don’t even like just to compete with your friends—that’s gross.”  
  
He scrubs a hand over his face and breathes out of his nose, hard. “Most of those girls just wanted to sleep with me because of how I look, or because I have money, or because they thought it would make people talk about them more,” Edoardo replies, defensive. He’s leaning towards her across the desk, and Ele’s never really thought of herself as shallow but she can’t focus on anything when his hands are right there, gesturing as he makes his points. “None of them gave a shit about me, or my life, or my shit, trust me.”  
  
“And that makes it okay to ring them up like trophies?” Ele asks. She thinks of Silvia, naively convinced she could be the girl to change the infamous Edoardo Incanti, and wonder how many others believed they were that girl too.  
  
He sighs. “No. I’m just saying, if I was using them for sex, most of them were using me for something too.”  
  
Eleonora doesn’t really know what to say to that, so she just shakes her head. “Okay.”  
  
Edoardo raises an eyebrow. “Okay?”  
  
She shrugs. “What I think of your… sex life doesn’t matter. I just don’t like seeing my friends get hurt.”  
  
There’s a pause, and then he laughs a little. “Of course it matters what you think, Ele.”  
  
She shifts in her seat, uncomfortable. “Why should it?”  
  
“Because you’re my—”  
  
“Don’t,” she says, holding up a hand. “Don’t finish that sentence, I swear.”  
  
Leaning back in his chair, he gives her a long, scrutinizing look. “What, are we just supposed to pretend that we don’t know that we’re—”  
  
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Eleonora insists vehemently, reaching into her backpack and pulling out a folder. It’s filled with the results of almost a week’s worth of research. “In this era of globalization, only forty percent of soulmates even end up meeting each other—”  
  
“Well, we’ve already crossed that bridge.”  
  
“ _And_ ,” she continues, as if she hadn’t heard him, “Among those who _do_ meet, only fifty percent have any sort of romantic relationship.”  
  
“Those aren’t bad odds,” Edoardo muses, and Eleonora internally berates herself for blushing at the insinuation. She coughs, and proceeds.  
  
“And not all soulmates who meet even stay in contact. It’s not a guarantee of anything. Thirty percent lose touch, or have a falling out, or just don’t form relationships at all.” She pushes the folder towards him, glancing up to find him staring back, his brow furrowed, making a face at her like he partly thinks she’s crazy and partly—well. Her heart speeds up when she recognizes the fondness she’d seen on Niccolò’s face yesterday, at the café, looking at Martino. Eleonora quickly looks down at her lap.  
  
“You’re really worried about this,” he says, sounding entertained, as he flips through the folder. She wants to know what about her is so damn amusing to him.  
  
“Not _worried_ —”  
  
“Just slightly obsessive.”  
  
“Like you can talk,” she grumbles, and he laughs, loud.  
  
“Touché.”  
  
“I’m just _saying_ ,” Ele pushes on, desperate to make him see her point. “This doesn’t have to change anything. It doesn’t have to _mean_ anything. My mom’s soulmate is her sister. My dad’s was a childhood friend that he lost contact with, and my brother might never hear from his. We don’t have to—to talk, or date, or do anything at all—”  
  
Edoardo hands her back her folder, having barely perused its contents. She’s slightly offended. “It means something to me, though,” he says, and his eyes are dark like they were in the café last Friday. As much as Eleonora wants to look away, she finds that she can’t. “My parents were soulmates, and I’ve always wanted…” He trails off, and shrugs, casting his gaze downward.  
  
Eleonora hesitates, then asks, “Were?”  
  
She watches him stare at the floor, then out the window, his jaw slightly clenched. “Yeah, my mom… my mom died.” There’s a ring on his finger that he plays with as he says it. “When I was twelve.”  
  
“Oh,” Eleonora says stupidly, searching for something else to add. “I didn’t… I don’t know what to say,” she admits quietly.  
  
“That’s okay.” Edoardo gives her a small, private smile, and her stomach flips. “But growing up around her and my dad… I don’t know, maybe I took it for granted that everyone would want that.”  
  
“Want what?” Her voice is almost a whisper now, and she isn’t sure why.  
  
Still playing with the ring on his hand, he shrugs. She wonders, for the first time ever, if he’s nervous. “Their other half, I guess.”  
  
Ele swallows, and looks down at her hands. They’re covered in his handwriting, reaching out to her, searching for her. “I don’t know if I like the idea that you’re incomplete without someone else,” she says slowly. This conversation suddenly feels fraught, like she’s walking a tightrope and one wrong word could spell doom. She doesn’t know why it suddenly feels like this matters so much.  
  
Still not looking at her, Edoardo says, “My mom called my dad her… soul friend.” He laughs a little, but it sounds different, thick. Eleonora realizes, her heart clenching, that he might be trying not to cry. “She’d say he was the one person in the world that… let her be herself. That he… she always felt like she belonged, like she was understood, when she was with him.”  
  
He looks up at her, then, and Eleonora can’t breathe, can’t reply, can’t do anything but stare back at him. His eyes are a little shiny, but he smiles at her, and it’s genuine. “It sounds nice,” he says. “Not that you _can’t_ live without them, but that you… wouldn’t want to.”  
  
Eleonora can’t imagine having someone she can share every facet of herself with, when it feels like she spends every day sorting her feelings into boxes labeled _acceptable for others_ and _never to be spoken of to another soul_. Even her mom, Filo, Eva—there’s so many things she can’t imagine ever putting into words for them. The idea that she could unpack her most intimate thoughts and fears in front of Edoardo Incanti, of all people, is patently absurd.  
  
But she also couldn’t, until just this moment, really imagine Edoardo Incanti spilling his soul to her on a Tuesday afternoon over her chemistry textbook. She can’t fathom how she ended up here, knowing something so intimate about him, and watching him brush at his eyes casually and clear his throat.  
  
All at once, Ele feels truly, incredibly out of her depth. So she does what she does best, and deflects. “I really do need to study,” she says lamely, staring at her notes. After a pause, probably taking pity on her, Edoardo starts gathering his things and stands.  
  
“Are you coming on Friday?” he asks, and Ele looks up, confused. “Rocco’s birthday party,” he prompts.  
  
She shrugs, confused. “I don’t know.”  
  
“You should come,” Edoardo says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “There’s something I want to show you.”  
  
Ele raises an eyebrow. “At Rocco Martucci’s house?”  
  
He laughs and taps the side of his nose with his finger. “Good luck on your test tomorrow, Ele,” he says. She doesn’t bother to correct the name, just watches him go.  
  
She never gets around to reviewing her chemistry notes. For the rest of her lunch period she just sits, eats her cold pasta, and wonders what the fuck just happened.  
  
-  
  
**WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16  
14:03**  
  
It’s raining outside, and so the hallways are absolutely packed. Curled on the windowsill in the stairwell, Eleonora bumps into the window as someone shoves past her. “Watch where you’re going!” Sana calls after them. “Asshole,” she grumbles under her breath, and Ele laughs.  
  
They’re debriefing the chemistry test and debating their answers to one particularly tough question when Silvia arrives, putting her books and bag on the sill before hopping up to sit next to Sana. Eleonora hasn’t seen her since Friday, and the low hum of anxiety she’s felt all week flares.  
  
“How was the test?” Silvia asks, and Ele feels her heart lift a little as Sana starts to chatter about how difficult it was and all the surprise material their teacher had thrown in. Maybe, she thinks guiltily, she’d underestimated her friend. Sure, Edoardo had once upon a time made Silvia slightly lose her mind, but that was a long time ago. She was a smart girl. Maybe none of this would change anything, and Eleonora could go on with her life as usual—  
  
“Ele?”  
  
Silvia is looking at her expectantly. Ele shakes her head a little, lost in her thoughts as she was. “Sorry,” she says quickly. “It was hard. I didn’t really get to study as much as I wanted.” To say she’s been distracted would be an understatement.  
  
As if on cue, Edoardo and his friends come trudging up the stairs. It looks like they got caught in the rain—Edoardo’s curls, at least, are completely soaked, and his t-shirt is sticking to his chest in a mildly pornographic manner. The din of the school falls away to a low hum as Ele stares at him, heart in her throat. She can’t help it, when he’s shaking out his hair like a puppy and pulling his shirt away from his body as his friends do the same around him. As he flips his hair one more time, trying to see past the one unruly curl that’s always falling in front of his eyes, his eyes lock on Eleonora’s.  
  
She snaps her head around to glare out the window so fast that for a second she’s worried she sprained something in her neck. All the noise of the hallway—the chatting, the squeaking of sneakers on the tile floors, uproarious laughter—rushes back in alongside a chorus of wolf whistles. Chancing a glance away from the rain outside, Eleonora blushes and narrows her eyes when she realizes it’s the Villa Boys, laughing at her apparently very obvious reaction to a drenched Edoardo Incanti.  
  
He’s rolling his eyes and pushing them all up the stairs, and gives Ele a little wave as they pass. She ignores it in favor of staring straight ahead, trying to organize her thoughts. It’s not her fault. She’s only human, and the fact that her wrists currently ache, and the way her eyes always seem to drift to his hands… it doesn’t mean anything other than Ele is a teenager and he’s a hot guy. It’s fine. It’s nothing.  
  
Unfortunately, sitting right in front of her are Sana and Silvia, both looking at her like she’s grown two heads.  
  
“Everything okay?” Sana asks, trying not to laugh. Eleonora really wishes she could kick her from this vantage point. Just lightly.  
  
“Fine,” Ele mutters in response.  
  
“By the way, Ele,” Silvia says, with the forced casualness of somebody who has been waiting to bring up a topic for a while. “Leo Endrizzi asked me about you today.”  
  
Sana’s eyebrows practically jump to her hijab, and Ele wrinkles her nose, confused. “Who?”  
  
“Leo!” Silvia says excitedly, like the name might suddenly start to mean something if she says it loud enough. “He’s in my English class, he’s _so_ cute and he wanted to know if I could give him your number—”  
  
“Silvia,” Ele groans, pressing her forehead to the cool glass of the window. “Please say you didn’t.”  
  
“Of course not,” Silvia replies. “I said I had to ask you first. He’s really nice, Ele, and kind of nerdy, like you.”  
  
“Silvia,” Sana says warningly. Silvia makes an innocent face like, _what?_ Ele shakes her head at Sana.  
  
“I really do not want to date anyone right now, Silvia, but thank you for the very kind offer,” she says robotically, like she’s reciting from a script.  
  
Silvia nods and bites her lip. Eleonora can see her hesitate before she says, “Do you think Edoardo would be mad?”  
  
“Mad about what?”  
  
“About you dating Leo.”  
  
“I’m _not_ dating Le—whoever the fuck,” Ele says, suddenly understanding very clearly the entire purpose of this conversation. “And even if I was, what do I care what Edoardo Incanti thinks?”  
  
“He’s your soulmate,” Silvia points out, and Ele can’t really tell if she sounds jealous or not. “You two are meant to be together.”  
  
“We’re not meant to be anything,” Eleonora says quickly, and starts fumbling in her bag for her research folder.  
  
Before she can pull it out, Sana cuts in. “Leave it, Silvia.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“Seriously,” Sana says, with her Scary Sana face on. Eleonora is grateful to her, even though the air in the stairwell feels tense now.  
  
Silvia has the grace to look a little embarrassed. She opens her mouth, then closes it, as if searching for something to say. “So you’re not interested in Edo?” she asks, finally, in a small voice.  
  
“Oh my God—” Sana exclaims, annoyed, at the same moment that Ele vehemently says, “ _No!_ ”  
  
“But do you think he likes you?”  
  
Eleonora is the one who doesn’t know what to say now. She doesn’t want to lie, but— “I don’t know,” she settles for, sighing. “But nothing’s going to happen, Silvia, okay? I just want to focus on school and radio and not think about this anymore.” She hopes Silvia can hear the note of begging in her voice.  
  
Silvia nods, and Eleonora goes back to staring at the rain outside and wishing this were all a very vivid nightmare.  
  
“Seriously, Silvia, Edoardo Incanti?” Sana asks, her voice low, as if she doesn’t want Ele to hear. “It’s been almost a year. And this—” she motions towards Eleonora— “is the perfect chance to get over it.”  
  
“I know,” Silvia mumbles, sounding chastened. She taps her fingers on her water bottle for a second, looking out the window, and then, as if she can’t help herself, exclaims, “But did you _see_ him, Sana, all wet from the rain… he’s so _hot_ , I can’t even—”  
  
-  
  
**THURSDAY, JANUARY 17  
20:52**  
  
**LE MATTE**  
**Eva Brighi:** Should we have a little pre-game at mine before the party tomorrow?  
**Eva Brighi:** 🍾👻  
**Federica Cacciotti:** Yes yes yes  
**Sana Allagui:** 👍  
**Silvia Mirabella:** 💃🏼  
**Silvia Mirabella:** What time?  
**Eva Brighi:** 9?  
**Eva Brighi:** Are you coming @Eleonora Sava?  
**Eleonora Sava:** I don’t know…  
**Federica Cacciotti:** Come Ele!!!!  
**Federica Cacciotti:** It’ll be more fun with you there  
**Eva Brighi:** Get wild with us  
**Eva Brighi:** 👯♀️  
**Silvia Mirabella:** Leo will be there!  
**Eva Brighi:** Who?  
**Silvia Mirabella:** The handsome guy from my English class who likes Ele 😗  
**Sana Allagui:** Oh no  
**Eleonora Sava:** Silvia…  
**Eva Brighi:** Come on Ele dance your soulmate troubles away with us  
**Eva Brighi:** 💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻  
**Eva Brighi:** It will be fun!  
**Sana Allagui:** And if not we will pay for your taxi to leave early  
**Eleonora Sava:** Okay, deal  
  
-  
  
**FRIDAY, JANUARY 18  
22:39**  
  
By the time the girls make it to Rocco’s, it’s clear that they’ve missed the surprise element of the surprised party—the birthday boy is already surrounded by a knot of people in the middle of the dance floor, having champagne sprayed on him by Chicco Rodi.  
  
Eleonora has never seen a bigger house in her life. Actually, calling it a house seems woefully inadequate—it’s more like a palace, with high, arching ceilings, marble everywhere, and huge windows looking out over perfectly manicured grounds. It had taken them five minutes just to walk from the gate to the front door. She has no idea what Rocco’s parents do, but wouldn’t be surprised if it were semi-illegal.  
  
Her blood is already buzzing a little from the glass (or two) of wine she’d drank at Eva’s, desperate to put an end to the anxiety that’s followed her like a shadow all week. The alcohol has done its job admirably—just a little tipsy, Ele feels relaxed enough to let Eva and Fede pull her into the throng of dancing masses, to take Silvia’s hands in her own and spin them both in circles, to shout along to the lyrics of the pounding music until she’s hoarse and can forget about all the eyes that had trailed her at school this week.  
  
She’s all too aware of Edoardo’s presence at every second. Her skin feels like it’s jumping with static electricity, and every time she catches a glimpse of him across the dance floor, the strobing blue-and-purple lights throwing color across his curls and the slope of his nose and the angle of his cheekbones, it’s like she can feel her skin crackle with energy. It must be the wine, she thinks, as Fede twirls her around and drops Ele, laughing, into a low dip.  
  
Just as Fede pulls her back up, Edoardo looks her way. It’s like a shock to the system, his eyes on her in this dark, loud room, and he’s all the way across the room and there’s so many people between them but it doesn’t feel that way at all. As he raises the bottle of beer in his hand in a little _cheers_ motion and smiles at her, he feels as near to her as he did on Tuesday, just across her desk, close enough to touch.  
  
Out of nowhere, she suddenly feels very, very thirsty.  
  
Pulling away from her friends, Ele motions towards the actual, full-service bar that is apparently a permanent fixture in this mansion, making sure her friends know where she’s going. Only after she’s elbowed her way through the crowded dance floor does she realize Silvia’s followed her.  
  
“Ele!” Silvia cries, wrapping her arms around Ele’s middle and squeezing, like a little drunken koala. Ele leans across the bar to motion for the bartender. She orders two glasses of water before turning in Silvia’s arms and pressing her hands to the other girl’s cheeks.  
  
“You good, Sil?” she calls over the music, ducking her head towards Silvia’s ear so she might hear better.  
  
“Yes, yes,” Silvia babbles, turning her head this way and that, like she’s looking for somebody. When she looks at Ele again, she pouts. “You look so beautiful tonight, Ele,” she half-whines, and Ele laughs. “Which is good, because—oh! There he is!”  
  
Eleonora’s head snaps up and follows Silvia’s gaze to see a guy headed their way, a grin on his face and his eyes trained on Ele’s face. She tries not to cringe too hard. He’s not ugly, not by any means—about her height, with broad shoulders and sandy-colored hair. Still, she is so _not_ in the mood.  
  
“Silvia!” he says enthusiastically, greeting her with kisses on each cheek. “Eleonora Sava,” he adds, and leans forward to greet her in the same manner. Eleonora sticks out her hand to shake his before he gets the chance.  
  
“This is Leo!” Silvia says, one hand on Ele’s waist and the other on this guy’s—Leo’s—shoulder. “We take English together, he has the best accent in class. Ele studied in England last semester,” she adds, and Leo nods like this is the most interesting thing he’s ever heard in his life. Eleonora wonders how quickly she can extract herself from this situation.  
  
“Well, you two have fun,” Silvia says coyly, taking the glass of water the bartender just put down and disappearing onto the dance floor.  
  
“Can I get you a drink?” Leo yells over the music, moving too close to her. Ele takes a step back.  
  
“I’m fine with water, thank you,” she says politely, and his smile sours somewhat. Ele already kind of hates him.  
  
“Ah, don’t be so boring!” he says, as if it’s meant to be charming, reaching past her to order two cocktails.  
  
“Wouldn’t want that,” Ele mutters under her breath, sipping her water.  
  
“What was that?”  
  
“Nothing!” Eleonora says, plastering on the fakest smile imaginable. “Listen, Leo, I really should get back to my friends—”  
  
“Come on,” he said, reaching out to touch her arm. Ele shrugs off his hand, fake smile quickly evaporating. “I’ve always wanted to talk to you, you know.”  
  
“Really?” Ele says, tracing a finger around the rim of her glass. She finds that extremely hard to believe. She doubts Leo knew she existed before last weekend.  
  
“That killer lipstick…” he says, trailing off, and Ele looks at him, confused. “It gives a guy ideas, you know?”  
  
“No, I don’t know,” she replies, cold. He raises his hands defensively.  
  
“Just trying to give you a compliment.” Eleonora wants to smack him, or stalk off, but before she can, she feels someone leaning against the bar behind her, warm. Glancing over her shoulder, she finds Edoardo, a kind smile on his face but his eyes steely. He raises an eyebrow at her before turning his attention to Leo.  
  
“Hey man,” he says, holding out a hand. “I don’t think we’ve met. Edoardo.”  
  
Leo’s eyes flicker back and forth between the two of them so many times in two seconds that it’s almost comical. He looks annoyed. “Leo,” he replies, taking Edo’s hand and shaking it once before dropping it.  
  
“I hope there’s not a problem here,” Edoardo shouts over the music, and Leo’s cheeks redden.  
  
“We were just talking—”  
  
“Actually, I was just about to leave,” Ele interrupts, not eager to be the center of some caveman-like pissing contest. “Nice to meet you,” she says to Leo shortly, hoping he can glean from her tone just how little she means it. Then she turns on her heel and storms through the nearest doorway. A less-crowded sitting room awaits on the other side. The music is less deafening in here, but there’s still tons of people, laughing and yelling.  
  
A hand finds the small of her back, and Ele whips around to see Edoardo has followed her. “Don’t touch me,” she says shortly, taking a step back from him. He drops his hand. Ele is overcome by the petulant desire to stomp her foot, she’s so frustrated. “You know, I had that handled,” she adds, raising her voice so he can hear her over all the noise.  
  
“Trust me, if anyone knows that you can handle a guy on your own, it’s me,” Edoardo says, leaning into her space so she can hear him and smiling. Ele crosses her arms and does her best not to smile back. “But I was looking for you, and figured you wouldn’t mind being interrupted.”  
  
She hadn’t minded at all, really. But she’s loathe to give him the impression that she wants him fighting her battles.  
  
Instead of answering, Ele just purses her lips and looks at the ground. Her skin is still humming with that static electricity feeling, stronger than ever now that he’s close. “Looking for me for what?” she asks.  
  
Edoardo holds up a small ring with a key hanging from it. “I wanted to show you something, remember?” He grins and heads towards a door across the room.  
  
Eleonora hesitates. He could be leading her anywhere—to a murder basement, or a sex dungeon. Does she really want to wander off in the middle of the night with Edoardo Incanti?  
  
He looks back at her when he reaches the door and raises an eyebrow when he realizes she hasn’t moved. Ele, against her better judgment, is curious. She wants to know what he intends to show her, and she’s still just drunk enough to give into that feeling. So she follows him.  
  
Eyes track them from all directions as they make their way through the gigantic house, room after room of people too drunk to disguise their interest in the story they must think is playing out before them. Eleonora is suddenly self-conscious of how it all must look—her following Edoardo Incanti to god-knows-where, just the two of them, their faces flushed from drinking and dancing.  
  
It’s a blessing when Edoardo finally opens a door to the grounds, letting her exit before him. The air is chilly, and there’s nobody in sight, just an endless expanse of _space_.  
  
“You wanted to show me the backyard?” Ele asks, looking around. It is pretty back here—there’s string lights hanging here and there, and a fountain babbling in the distance. But Edoardo shakes his head.  
  
“Nope. This way,” he says, leading her down a path to the right. They walk for a minute or two, Ele increasingly aware of the silence between them and wondering if she should break it, before she looks up and sees—  
  
A greenhouse.  
  
It’s massive, bigger than any Eleonora has ever seen in real life. It glows bright pink against the dark night sky, its glass walls and ceiling slightly foggy from condensation. Her heart speeds up at the sight of it, excitement at the idea of going in and—something else, at the thought of him wanting to show this to her. She tries, and fails, to think of another time somebody did something like this for her.  
  
Ele opens her mouth to say something, anything, but can only come up with, “Can we go in?”  
  
Edoardo’s laugh echoes in the silence of the night and he pulls out the key he’d shown her before. “Why is it locked?” Ele asks, as he unlocks the door and lets her in. The air inside is warm and humid.  
  
“Probably because there’s a weed plant hiding in here somewhere,” Edo replies, shutting the door behind them and locking it. Ele makes a face at him, and he laughs. “Seriously! Rocco’s dad gets _headaches_ ,” he says, using air quotes.  
  
“And how did you get the key?”  
  
“Rocco stole it for me.”  
  
Ele puts a hand to her heart as she starts to wander down the long aisle stretching before them. “True friendship.” She pauses in front of a bench filled with boxes of flowers—gladiolus, zinnias, dahlias. She touches a thumb to the soft petal of a pink gladiolus and smiles to herself.  
  
“Eva told me you like gardening,” Edoardo says from behind her, and she turns to look at him. He’s got his hands in his pockets and is looking around inquisitively. She wonders if he’s been in here before.  
  
“I can’t believe you interrogated my best friend about me,” Ele says, walking slowly. She stops here and there to examine plants she recognizes, and ones she doesn’t. He follows a few paces behind her.  
  
“Well, as you like to say, I know nothing about you,” Edoardo replies. “I was trying to change that.”  
  
Eleonora hums a little, and tries not to think too hard about him, here in Rome while she was in Manchester, thinking about her. Gathering information, and making connections, and asking his friends to steal keys to greenhouses for when she returned. There’s a feeling ballooning under her ribs, and she doesn’t want to examine it too closely. Instead, she spins in a small circle, taking in a lemon tree in one corner, a money tree in another, and Edoardo, watching her, standing between them. There’s a small smile on his face.  
  
“I have to say, I’ve never seen someone get so excited over plants,” he teases, and Eleonora just laughs. Maybe it’s the wine, or all the oxygen in here, or the reality of this gesture settling on her shoulders, but she can’t imagine even pretending to be annoyed with him right now.  
  
He continues to walk behind her as she slowly circles the greenhouse, running her fingers along the wooden tables, reaching up to feel a chenille plant hanging from a rafter.  
  
“Why’s the light pink?” he asks at one point, looking around curiously.  
  
“It’s a specific wavelength of the light spectrum,” Ele says absentmindedly. Looking across the aisle, she watches Edoardo examine the lemon tree, finding fruit but leaving it undisturbed. “Violet light helps plants and flowers grow faster.”  
  
“Ah, I look so much better in blue, though,” he jokes. Ele opens her mouth to say that pink looks good on him, too, but decides, at the last second, that she’s not quite _that_ drunk. Instead, coming across a work bench with a big sink set in it, she hoists herself up to sit. From here, tucked in the corner, she can see the whole greenhouse, teeming with life, filled with flowers and plants she could never keep alive on her little veranda, without temperature control and special lights. Only in her wildest dreams could she imagine having a place like this one day.  
  
“I want to live here,” she says quietly. Edoardo ambles closer and leans against the bench, close enough that she can feel the warmth radiating from him. The static electricity feeling returns to her skin, crackling and insistent.  
  
“Did you start gardening with your parents?” he asks. It’s not so hard to make eye contact with him here, under the pink lights, half in the dark.  
  
Ele shakes her head and hesitates, wondering how much to share. She thinks of him telling him about his mom and dad on Tuesday, and exhales. “I was in the hospital for a little while when I was thirteen, fourteen,” she starts.  
  
Edoardo’s brow furrows. “Were you sick?”  
  
Ele shrugs. “Something like that,” she says, thinking of the months she’d spent refusing to eat after her first boyfriend had stopped talking to her, and the recovery center her mother had found after Ele collapsed for the third time in gym class. “My room was… kind of depressing, so my mom brought me some flowers.” She looks down at her hands. “Only I got super upset when they died.” She laughs a little at the memory. “I kind of threw a tantrum. So the next day, she brought me flowers in a pot instead, so I could keep them forever.” She motions over his shoulder. “Gladiolus. Yellow.”  
  
She still can’t really bring herself to look at him, so she just tucks her hair behind her ear, for want of something to do with her hands, and stares straight ahead. “Then it just kind of became a thing. My brother gave me a plant, and my aunt, and my dad.” She swallows. “And when I went home, I brought them all with me.”  
  
His fingers graze over her hand where it rests on the work bench, and Ele swears her skin sparks. She looks up at him and sees that fondness in his eyes, again. “And now you’re a plant addict,” he finishes, teasing. Ele smiles.  
  
“Something like that,” she agrees. She doesn’t move her hand and, for a moment, neither does he, their skin just barely touching. Then he wraps his fingers around her palm, and Ele’s heart jumps. How silly, to be so flustered over holding hands, she thinks. _Holding hands with_ Edoardo Incanti _, though,_ her brain says, and Ele shivers.  
  
“We should probably go back in,” she says quietly. “People will think we’re…”  
  
He raises an eyebrow. “People will think we’re…” he prompts, and Ele rolls her eyes.  
  
“You _know_ what people will think,” she mutters, finally breaking eye contact. She can feel him shrug, his hand still loosely holding hers.  
  
“Who cares?”  
  
_I do,_ Ele thinks, and moves her hand away from his. She raises it to her chest and rubs the skin with her other hand, as if it were burned.  
  
“Ele,” Edoardo says, and she looks at him again. From this close, she can see the stubble on his cheek where he’d missed a spot shaving, and the way his eyes drop to her mouth. “Do you want to go back in?”  
  
Eleonora thinks of the flashing blue lights, the thumping music, of dancing in a circle with her friends and the weight of hundreds of eyes on her all week, judging her, wondering about her, theorizing about who she is and what she wants. In comparison, the cool pink lights of the greenhouse, the quiet sound of the oscillating fans on the ceiling, the sweet floral scent in the humid air—it all seems so appealing. Even the weight of Edoardo’s gaze on her doesn’t feel so heavy, when she thinks of who else might be looking at her instead. At least she’s starting to understand what she sees in his eyes when he stares at her from across a room. He’s suddenly, somehow, become a known entity to her.  
  
No, she doesn’t want to go back inside, she thinks, but she doesn’t say it, because she knows what she’d be saying. But she swears that he can read her so easily, because he takes a quick, nervous breath and leans forward, his nose brushing hers, and Eleonora realizes at the last second that Edoardo Incanti wants to kiss her, and that she might let him—  
  
And then, all at once, every light in the greenhouse switches off with a dramatic _buzz_ , leaving them in complete and total darkness. Eleonora starts and turns her head away from him, blinking a few times, her eyes trying to adjust to the pitch black.  
  
“Fuck,” Edoardo says, his voice rough. “Did we do something?”  
  
Ele tries to swallow, but her throat is dry. “The lights are probably on timers,” she says, a little hoarse. “So the plants can rest.”  
  
“Who knew plants need rest,” he replies, sounding only slightly bitter. He’s still close enough that she can feel his breath on her ear. Her heart is beating so fast that she wouldn’t be surprised if he could hear it. She hops down from the work bench, her knees shaking a little, grateful when her phone _dings_ because it gives her something to do other than stand before him, unsure whether to run or finish what they’d started.  
  
She hopes his eyes aren’t so adjusted to the dark that he can see her hands tremble as she fumbles with her phone, finding a voice message from Sana. “ _Ele, Fede drank too much and is sick, we just called a taxi to take us back to her place, come meet us out front—_ ”  
  
“I should go,” Ele says quietly. “Um, I—”  
  
“I’ll walk you out,” Edoardo replies. Ele can’t stand the tension in the air. The humid air, which had felt so comforting before, feels stifling now.  
  
“It’s okay,” Ele says, as they step outside and he locks the door behind them, pocketing the key. “I know where to go.” She stares at him for one long moment, unsure of what to say, and he opens his mouth to say something, and she finds she can’t stand to hear it. “I’ll see you,” she mumbles lamely, hair swinging in front of her face as she turns to leave.  
  
He doesn’t follow her, and for that she is deeply, deeply grateful. It isn’t until she’s in the back of a cab with her head on Sana’s shoulder and Eva’s hand in hers that her heart stops racing.


	3. WEEK 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter took for-fucking-ever, and for that I apologize. As you can see, it's as long as the last two combined. It was also written and rewritten a number of times, because there's a lot of important scenes in it! Writing it also coincided with an extremely busy period at work for me, so it was just a perfect storm. But it's here now, and I hope it was worth the wait.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who left kudos, comments, and feedback elsewhere (on Tumblr, mostly!) about enjoying the fic. When I was having a hard time writing this one, I really came back to all the positive responses to this to feel inspired again!
> 
> WARNING: This chapter does contain a therapy session, and allusions to disordered eating.

**SATURDAY, JANUARY 19  
9:06**  
  
Though she’d tried in vain to sleep in, now that the sun is risen and her room is bright, Eleonora gives up on sleep and flops onto her stomach, toying with her phone. It hadn’t been a particularly restful night. She had only been able to sleep an hour here, an hour there, waking up periodically to stubborn thoughts of Edoardo, his fingers brushing over her palm, his flyaway curl brushing her forehead, his eyes shining in the dark.  
  
Her dreams were more daring than Ele ever could be when awake, and tormented her with flashes of heat, glimpses of skin, hints of what it could be like with him. Of how he could make her feel. Now her sheets are mussed, tangled up in her legs, and she feels too hot lying in the patch of sun streaming in from her window.  
  
Unlocking her phone, she taps into her text conversation with him. There’s the few texts he’s sent her this year and then everything he’d sent when she was in Manchester—morning greetings, date ideas, the occasional selfie, all interspersed with her own more infrequent responses, sometimes telling him to fuck off, other times—she realizes now, with a jolt—flirting back.  
  
Before she can overthink it, Ele types out a message and hits send.  
  
**Eleonora Sava:** Thank you for last night  
  
She stares as one check appears next to it, then two. He answers her almost immediately.  
  
**Edoardo Incanti:** Anything for you  
  
Ele shivers and moves to toss her phone aside, but it buzzes again before she gets the chance.  
  
**Edoardo Incanti:** Can we do it again?  
**Edoardo Incanti:** Greenhouse optional  
  
Her pulse quickens at the thought of another night spent only with him. Before, the thought had always made her roll her eyes—she hadn’t even been able to picture what a date with him would look like.  
  
Now, she thinks she knows all too well. Letting her phone fall to the floor, Ele grabs a pillow and shoves it over her own face to muffle her groan.  
  
-  
  
**MONDAY, JANUARY 21  
12:15**  
  
“—my head still fucking hurts, I swear.”  
  
“Still hungover?” Ele asks as she joins the girls at the top of the outdoor stairs, lunch in hand. Fede pouts at her and nods.  
  
“I can’t believe you all let me drink that much!” she whines, and Sana laughs.  
  
“ _Let_ you? You practically punched me when I tried to stop you taking those last two shots—”  
  
Fede sniffs and turns up her nose. “I don’t remember that at all.”  
  
“Did you forget trying to flash the bartender too?” Eva asks, snickering, and Fede reaches over to smack her knee. Eleonora goggles at her.  
  
“Tell me you didn’t,” she says, and Fede waves a hand.  
  
“No, Silvia managed to stop me.” She pulls out her phone and waves it around. “I did get his number, though,” she adds, waggling her eyebrows.  
  
Ele laughs, and preoccupies herself with trying to balance her lunch on her knees and eat it at the same time. Before she can take a bite, Fede adds, “Ugh, I puked all over the bathroom sink, though— my mom was _pissed_ —”  
  
“Tell me you’re not grounded!” Silvia says, sounding alarmed. Eleonora raises an eyebrow at her, quizzical. “The radio party on Friday?” Silvia prompts, and Ele nods, like she hadn’t completely forgotten. “Fede, it’s supposed to be at your place!”  
  
“No way that’s happening,” Fede says gloomily. “I’m on lockdown for the foreseeable future. Stupid tequila.”  
  
“What are we going to _do_ ,” Silvia cries dramatically, head in her hands. “Half of the people I convinced to sign up this semester only did because I said we’d have parties—”  
  
“We’ll find somewhere else to have it,” Sana says soothingly.  
  
“Where?” Silvia asks. “My parents would never let us drink, neither would yours— Eva, could you host it, maybe?”  
  
Eva shakes her head. “My grandma’s visiting for the weekend.” Silvia groans. “ _Sorry_ , Sil.”  
  
Eleonora has known where this conversation would end since it started, but she’s still loathe to agree. “Ele, please,” Silvia starts, and she cringes.  
  
“I don’t know, Silvia—”  
  
“Your apartment is perfect! No parents, and Filo won’t care—”  
  
She’s not wrong, but Ele still hesitates, not wanting to open up her home to a currently undisclosed number of drunk teenagers. “Is it big enough, though? We don’t really have a lot of space,” she points out. “Couldn’t we ask someone else?”  
  
“Nobody else will agree this last minute,” Silvia says, and Ele knows she’s right. “And we’ll keep the numbers down. And I’ll pay for all the drinks. Please, Ele?” she asks, clasping her hands together in front of her chest. “Please, please, _please_?”  
  
Ele resigns herself to a Thursday night of cleaning her entire apartment, and says, “Okay, Silvia.” Fede and Sana cheer, and Silvia jumps up to throw her arms around Ele’s shoulders and squeeze her.  
  
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” the blonde says happily, throwing herself back onto the stairs. “Radio Osvaldo owes you a life debt, Eleonora Sava.”  
  
Ele nods and returns to her lunch, half-listening to the others chat about how much alcohol to buy and who to cut from the guest list. She manages to eat a few bites before she realizes the laughter around her has died out and the girls are being weirdly quiet. Looking up, she finds them all staring at each other, and her, suspiciously. “What did I miss?” she asks, narrowing her eyes.  
  
Eva looks at Silvia and coughs. “Nothing, it’s just… well, you, um, missed a lot on Saturday night,” she says slowly, and Eleonora feels a small _zap_ up her spine that’s like a mix of embarrassment and regret.  
  
“Did I?” she mumbles, scuffing the toe of her boot against the ground.  
  
Eva gives Silvia a significant look and nudges her, and for a moment Eleonora can feel the beginnings of panic nipping at her fingertips, afraid she’s about to be yelled at, or unceremoniously dumped by all of her friends, or—  
  
But Silvia just bites her lip and hesitates briefly before saying, “Some girls in my Italian class were talking about you this morning,” she says. Ele looks down. “And Edoardo,” Silvia adds, unnecessarily.  
  
“Saying what?” Ele asks, although she doesn’t really need to. An all-too familiar feeling is spreading throughout her body, icy and unpleasant. Eleonora knows how quickly rumors spread and burn out of control. She tries, and fails, to swallow down the anxiety rising in her throat.  
  
“You two disappeared together,” Eva says slowly. She puts a hand on Ele’s shoulder, comforting. “So people are saying you… you know… hooked up.”  
  
“We didn’t,” Eleonora says instantly, looking at Silvia as she does. Silvia nods and gives her a small smile, and Ele feels a little ill, because it’s not the whole story. They didn’t hook up, but they might have. Had the lights not gone out, had Sana not sent her that voice message, had she not run away—she might have let it happen. She might have wanted it.  
  
“What were you doing, then?” Sana asks, and Ele sighs, staring at her shoes.  
  
“We just… talked.” How can she tell them that Edoardo Incanti, knowing she loves to garden, brought her to a greenhouse? That her heart had stuttered, just for a second, at how handsome he’d looked under the pink ultraviolet lights, and that she had told him something about herself that she hadn’t even told them? “I don’t know,” she mumbles, frustrated. She shoves her lunch unceremoniously back into her bag, suddenly not hungry at all. “I’ll see you later, girls,” she says abruptly, standing and throwing her bag over her shoulder.  
  
“Ele, come on,” Eva says, looking alarmed. “We just wanted you to know—”  
  
“I know,” Ele says. “Thank you, really, I just…” She breathes hard through her nose, searching for the words to explain the anxiety taking over her body, the feeling of being watched, the desperate desire to _not be here right now_. As usual, she comes up with nothing. “I just need to go.”  
  
She leaves her friends behind, unsure if the sensation of eyes watching her leave, surrounding her on all sides, is real or imagined.  
  
-  
  
**MONDAY, JANUARY 21  
13:49**  
  
**Eleonora Sava:** Do you mind if I have a party on Friday?  
**Eleonora Sava:** Please say yes  
**Filippo Sava:** Ha  
**Filippo Sava:** Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t  
**Filippo Sava:** I’ll be at Dario’s all weekend anyway  
**Eleonora Sava:** Ugh  
**Eleonora Sava:** Are you sure you don’t want to be really strict with me for once?  
**Filippo Sava:** Nope  
**Filippo Sava:** Go crazy, little spider  
**Eleonora Sava:** Fine, you can help me clean on Thursday then  
**Filippo Sava:** Oh no  
**Eleonora Sava:** Oh yes  
  
-  
  
**TUESDAY, JANUARY 22  
18:39**  
  
Eleonora is leaning against the pole of her bus stop sign and scrolling through recipe ideas for dinner when she feels something brush against her palm and starts. Turning around, she finds Edoardo waiting, eyes crinkled at the corners from his smile. “You’re here late,” he says, and pushes his fingers between hers, casually, like he’s done it a thousand times before. It’s chilly outside but his skin feels warm, good, against hers.  
  
At the touch of his hand, images of last Friday flash, unbidden, across her imagination. The sun has set, and there are no pink lights illuminating his face tonight, but he looks just as handsome under the dull yellow glow of a nearby streetlight. There’s nobody around, but the back of Ele’s neck prickles, like somebody might be watching.  
  
“Radio,” Ele replies quietly, pulling her hand away from him and resting it on the strap of her backpack, unsure what else to do with it. Edoardo tilts his head to one side, grin fading a little, but he doesn’t say anything. “What are you still doing here?”  
  
He shrugs, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Avoiding going home,” he says cryptically, and Eleonora frowns, confused. “Let me give you a ride,” he adds, motioning over his shoulder. Ele hesitates.  
  
“My bus will be here in a few minutes—”  
  
“It’s freezing,” he replies, even though it’s not. “Come on, I’m parked right over here.”  
  
He spins on his heel and sets off for his car. Eleonora stares longingly at the bus stop for a moment and considers turning him down. But something in her chest that she isn’t ready to name, there since he brought her to that greenhouse, pulls her after him. She takes one step, then another, and starts to follow.  
  
After he opens the passenger door for her and she slides into his car, Ele realizes almost instantly that this is a mistake. The car smells like him, whatever cologne he must use, but concentrated—it reminds her of the holidays, spiced rum and wood. It’s enough to make her feel overwhelmed, wrapped up in him, even though he’s a foot away, typing her address into Google Maps. Her stupid, treacherous brain whispers, _if this is what it feels like to be in his car, imagine his room, his bed—_  
  
“You never answered my message,” he says, after they’ve driven for a few minutes in silence. Ele briefly considers playing dumb, staring out the window and watching the surrounding traffic. Passing streetlights slide onto and off of her face. A car honks in the distance, and the disembodied voice of the GPS lady tells Edoardo to turn left. The ticking of his blinker counts off the seconds without her reply.  
  
“No, I didn’t,” Ele finally answers quietly, fiddling with her phone in her lap, unsure of what excuse to use. It’s not often that she doesn’t know what to say to him. The indignation and annoyance and— _emotion_ that he’s always managed to stir in her means that now, sitting with him in the near-silence of his car, she feels… wrong, desperate for him to give her something to be annoyed about, to lash out at.  
  
“Phone broken?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Grounded for partying?”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“Busy with school?”  
  
“Not really.”  
  
“Just avoiding me, then?” he asks, and Ele turns her head to find him looking back, glancing at her before returning his eyes to the road. One corner of his mouth is turned up in a smirk. Her anger flares at his smug tone, and she huffs, crossing her arms and staring, hard, at the side view mirror.  
  
“Pretty much,” Ele grumbles under her breath. She doesn’t even need to look at him to know he’s probably laughing at her. She doesn’t need to, but she does anyway, leaning her head back against the headrest and allowing herself, while he’s occupied with the road, to just watch him. His curls are highlighted in green by a traffic light, his rings glinting in the dark drawing her eyes to his hands, relaxed on the steering wheel. Her heart speeds up a little, remembering his fingers, so long, skating over her hand last Friday, gentle.  
  
When he catches her staring, her head snaps forward and she starts counting streetlights for want of something, anything, to do besides watch him drive. Apparently that’s stupidly attractive to her for no reason.  
  
This time, when he speaks, his voice is low enough to make the hair on her arms stand up. “Let me take you out on Friday,” he says, soft. Ele’s stomach flips. It doesn’t make any sense. He’s asked her out before, countless times, on a myriad of ridiculous and impractical dates. Why should this feel any different?  
  
Only it does. Because he’s using that tone of voice that, she realizes, she’s only ever heard him use with her, like he needs to be extra gentle with her. It does, because she thinks she wants to say yes.  
  
“I can’t,” she says. “I have plans.”  
  
“Okay, then on Saturday.”  
  
They pass six, seven, eight streetlights. She asks, “Out where?”  
  
“A restaurant. The movies. The parking lot of a grocery store.” She pictures herself sitting on a curb with him, eating Balconi cakes outside the convenience store near her apartment with their arms touching, and something in her chest aches. “You can pick, I really don’t care.”  
  
The car pulls up outside of her apartment building and he takes the keys out of the ignition, turning to face her. Without the low rumble of the engine the car is silent, and she’s too aware of her own heartbeat, loud in her ears. Outside the windshield, the familiar sights of her street greet her—Mr. Alfonsi’s bike locked to the stop sign on the corner, laundry hung up across the street to dry by the old grandmother who lives two buildings down. She can see the string lights on her own veranda are lit up. Filo must be home, waiting for her to make dinner or, more likely, already ordering out since she’s late.  
  
“Ele—”  
  
“Don’t—”  
  
“ _Eleonora_ ,” he corrects himself, sounding impatient. Leaning forward, he lays an arm across the back of her seat. No part of him is touching her, but she still tenses. His teeth skim across his bottom lip before he asks, “Do you want to go out with me?”  
  
Ele swallows, and doesn’t answer the question. “It’s not a good idea.”  
  
His other hand finds hers, thumb tracing an unrecognizable pattern on her palm. “But do you want to?”  
  
“The whole school would find out—”  
  
“Do you want to?”  
  
“—Silvia would probably never speak to me again—”  
  
“Do you _want_ to?”  
  
“ _Yes_ ,” she says, finally meeting his eyes, which widen briefly before a grin, the biggest she’s ever seen him wear, splits his face. He squeezes her hand, and Ele flushes. “But—"  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Wait— no, we—”  
  
“Ele,” he groans, but he’s still smiling, and the hand resting behind her tugs on a lock of her hair. Suddenly, she feels like a spider trapped under a glass, frantic to escape. “Come on. If you want to, then why—"  
  
“You know, people saw us leaving the party together,” she interrupts, pulling her hand in her lap away from him and his stupid, pretty fingers that make her skin feel electric. “They think we— that _I_ —”  
  
Edoardo looks confused. “Okay?”  
  
Ele exhales loudly, annoyed with herself and her inability to articulate what she means, and with him and his continued refusal to just _let her be_. “I don’t want people thinking we…” She trails off, unable to even say it out loud without blushing. “Come on. You know what people think.”  
  
He shrugs. “Who cares?”  
  
She shakes her head. Of course he wouldn’t understand. “Easy for you to say.”  
  
He rubs a hand over his face, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What do you want me to do, Ele?” His smile is gone, replaced with a look akin to desperation. Like this is important to him. She can’t imagine that this earnest boy and his shining eyes and calloused fingers are part and parcel with the cocky asshole she’d told off in front of all of his friends last year. “I can’t change what people say, so why spend time worrying about it?”  
  
“But they’re wrong,” Ele says forcefully, and Edoardo groans, pushing a hand into his hair and pulling.  
  
“Are they? We like each other.” Ele’s disloyal heart thumps. “And we’re soulmates—”  
  
“Who says I like you?” she mutters stupidly, and he gives her a Look. A Look like he knows exactly what she’s trying to do, and isn’t going to let it happen. His one hand is still toying with her hair, and her heart won’t stop racing. She’s the spider, bumping up against the sides of the glass, looking for any way out.  
  
“You just _said_ —"  
  
“I don’t want to be the next X on your stupid wall, okay?” Ele snaps, doing her best to glare at him. “I don’t want people thinking I’m some dumb girl who thinks she can change you. That’s not me.”  
  
Edoardo pulls his hand from her hair but stays near to her, leaning across the center console. “You’re looking for reasons not to do this,” he says, motioning between them.  
  
“You don’t know that.” He’s right and she can’t stand it, so rather than looking at him, she crosses her arm and stares straight ahead, watching another car turn the corner. “You’re so _pushy_ , you just want to force me to—”  
  
“Force you to do something you _just told me_ you want to do?”  
  
The other car stops across the street from him and Ele watches the driver hop out of the front seat, carrying a paper bag right to the front of her apartment building and ringing the intercom. A moment later, the door to her building opens and she watches Filippo hand over some cash before accepting the bag of food gratefully.  
  
As Filo turns back to go inside, his gaze catches on Ele’s and it’s like time stands still for a moment as her brother’s eyes flick between her and Edoardo, sitting so close together, before he raises an eyebrow and waves obnoxiously. God, she’s never going to hear the end of this.  
  
“I have to go,” she says shortly, gathering up her phone and her bag and reaching for the door handle.  
  
“Ele, come on—”  
  
“I don’t owe you anything,” she spits, as harshly as possible, staring at him for a long moment. He doesn’t look annoyed, or mad, just… tired, or even hurt, which is somehow worse. Before he can convince her to stay, she pushes open the car door, clambering out of the car. The sound of the door slamming echoes outwards into the empty street but she doesn’t turn, needing to escape the isolated universe that seems to appear whenever they’re alone together.  
  
The fresh air, untainted by the scent of him, is a gift to her lungs. She stalks to her building and runs up the stairs as fast as her legs allow, but it doesn’t matter. No matter how fast she runs, how far she goes, how strictly she ignores him, Eleonora feels like she can’t outrun Edoardo, his presence, the feelings he inspires in her—the echo of his skin on hers, his voice in her ear, murmuring, _Let me take you out._ His eyes in the greenhouse, knowing she wanted to stay. His hands shaking in an abandoned classroom, fiddling with his rings, as he told her about his mother. If she could just gather it all up, his voice and looks and gestures, and store them away, maybe it would be easier for her to pretend it doesn’t matter. But she can’t seem to fit every part of him in her hands, all his contradicting parts, his rough edges and soft words, slipping between her fingers until it feels like he’s everywhere. Imprinted on the backs of her eyelids, written into her very skin.  
  
As she shuts the door of her apartment behind her and turns on a lamp, breaths finally starting to slow, Filo calls out to her from the veranda. “Hello, Miss Lovebird,” he sings. “I got you samosas.”  
  
“Stop,” Ele grumbles, tossing aside her backpack and heading out to meet him.  
  
“You know, I figured you’d end up dating him, but not this quickly,” Filo says. He’s setting out dishes and unpacking food. There’s a bottle of wine on the table.  
  
“We’re not dating,” Ele says tiredly, sinking into a chair. _I can’t change what people think about us, so why spend time worrying about it?_ Edoardo’s voice says in her head. She ignores it, bites into a samosa, and starts to make fun of Filo’s outfit, desperate for a distraction.  
  
-  
  
**WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23  
16:38**  
  
“It sounds like you like him,” her therapist says, using her pen to push her glasses up her nose.  
  
Eleonora stares at the plastic fidget toy in her hands and twists it once, twice, three times. “I don’t want to, though,” she mutters stubbornly.  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Look at what happened at my last school,” Ele says. A lump appears in her throat, like it does every time she tries to talk about this, and she tries to swallow around it. “I don’t want that to happen again—I can’t switch schools again, or make more new friends, or—”  
  
“And you going on a date with the boy you like would make all of that happen?”  
  
Ele rubs at her eyes and the back of her hand comes away damp. She sniffs. “We don’t need to talk about this,” she mumbles. “I’m here for the eating stuff, not to talk about my love life, it doesn’t even matter—”  
  
“Oh, I disagree,” her therapist says, leaning forward and offering Ele a box of tissues with a kind smile on her face. Ele furrows her brow, confused. “Not going out with your soulmate because you’re afraid of what people think, checking your appearance in every window you pass, having a hard time eating in front of your friends—all of these things are connected, Eleonora.”  
  
She shuts her eyes tight, and a few more tears gather in her lashes. Ele _hates_ crying, even—especially—here. “I just want people to see the good things about me,” she whispers, pushing the words past the tightness in her throat. “Is that bad?”  
  
“It’s not always bad to care what others think of you,” her therapist responds, quiet. “But when you push it to the extreme—when it’s all you think about, and every action you take is determined not by your conscience, or values, or what you think or want or feel…” She taps her pen on the pad on her lap. “Then yes, it can be bad.”  
  
Ele takes a deep, shuddering breath and presses a tissue to her eyes, staring past her therapist and out the office window. Outside, the sky is bluer than its been in days, and the sun is so bright it makes her squint.  
  
-  
  
**THURSDAY, JANUARY 24  
20:16**  
  
Yesterday’s beautiful weather had left as quickly as it came. It had been grey and overcast all day, and now, as she mops the kitchen, Ele can hear rain on the pavement outside. She hopes it doesn’t rain tomorrow—the veranda is so nice for parties.  
  
As she works her way out from the kitchen, focusing on dusty corners and scrubbing hard at one annoying scuff on the floor, she finds the living room suspiciously empty. “Filo!” she yells. “You’re supposed to be dusting!”  
  
Filo pads out of his bedroom, already in his pajamas. “You think a bunch of drunk teenagers will notice some dust?”  
  
“Filo!”  
  
“Fine, fine,” he mutters, going to the closet and grabbing a poofy feather duster. “You’re testy today,” he remarks, as he starts running it lazily over the nearest bookcase.  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
He gives her a look. “Please, I can hear an annoyed Nori from miles away. I’m an expert. I practically invented her. What’s up?”  
  
“Nothing,” Ele mumbles stubbornly, plunging the mop back into the bucket of sudsy water at her feet.  
  
“Eleonora,” Filo says sternly. She huffs.  
  
“Just… Okay, last Friday I left a party for a little while with Edoardo to… talk. And now the whole school thinks we… You know.”  
  
“And?” Filo says, moving on from the bookcase to their side tables much too quickly to be actually dusting.  
  
“And it’s not true!” Ele says, voice verging on a whine.  
  
“Maybe you should _make_ it true, then,” Filo replies, and when she swings her head around, he’s waggling his eyebrows at her. “Give them something to talk about, you know?”  
  
Ele’s jaw drops. “Filo—”  
  
He laughs. “Lighten up. The school was bound to find out you’re dating—”  
  
“We’re _not_ dating.”  
  
Filo hums and rolls his eyes. “You looked pretty cozy the other night, spider.”  
  
“That was not—” Ele struggles to find the words and, in the end, just emits a low, strangled scream. “Why is the whole universe so fucking interested? How am I supposed to figure out how _I_ feel if I spend all my time trying to make sure other people don’t have the wrong idea?”  
  
“Oh, don’t waste your time on that, Nori.”  
  
“But I don’t want people to think—”  
  
“Listen, Ele, people are always going to think and talk shit that isn’t true,” Filo says. He drops the feather duster, apparently tired of pretending to clean, and flops down on the couch. “I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning if I gave any headspace to that bullshit, you know? You’ve always worried too much, about that and everything else. Look where it got you.”  
  
Ele’s head snaps up and she stops mopping to stare at him. “What do you mean?”  
  
Her brother is suddenly very interested in examining one of their throw pillows, running a finger along the embroidered design on the front. “Spending all your time worrying if you’re pretty enough, or thin enough. The last time you were like this…”  
  
Ele looks at the floor. “This isn’t that, Filo.” She sighs. “I just… I don’t know, I don’t want people to get the wrong idea.”  
  
“You can’t control other people, little spider,” he says, giving her a small smile. He tilts his head to one side. “I know you hate that because you’re a whole entire control freak.”  
  
Ele snorts and goes back to mopping. “Thanks a lot.”  
  
“And anyway, if your soulmate boy toy recognizes that you’re the most beautiful, smart, stubborn, dense, amazing girl in the whole wide world, then you should give him a chance.”  
  
She picks up a pillow with her free hand and throws it at him. “Sure.”  
  
“What!” Filo exclaims, throwing the pillow back at her. It smushes into the side of Ele’s face before falling onto her pristine floor. “It means he sees all the effort I put into raising you—”  
  
“Yeah, _right_ ,” Ele giggles, smacking her brother on the back of the head. “Back to dusting, and clean up your room, too—”  
  
“ _My_ room?” Filo cries, bewildered. “Eleonora, you had better not let any of these teenagers have sex on my bed, dear God—”  
  
Later, after Eleonora has bullied Filippo into cleaning the bathroom and their apartment is more spotless than at any point since they’d moved in, she flops on her bed with her Italian homework and tries to focus on it, on anything besides Edoardo. Her phone has been silent for two days, and when she examines the skin of her hands, her arms, they’re smooth and free of marks.  
  
She crosses out a wrong answer she’d scribbled down in her distraction and groans, frustrated. It figures that, as soon as he’s decided to give her the space she’d wanted for so long, she can’t even enjoy it. Something that feels like guilt or regret is festering in the pit of her stomach. Ele can’t stop thinking about the look on his face when she’d told him she didn’t owe him anything.  
  
She runs the cap of her pen over her own wrist and shivers, shoving aside her textbooks and flopping onto her back. If she’d accepted his offer, where would they have gone on Saturday? In her imagination, her bedroom transforms into a dark restaurant, and Edoardo is seated across from her, the handsomest man in the room, his eyes filled with intention and his foot nudging hers under the table. The thought feels too mature, too grown up, beyond what she’s capable of.  
  
Maybe that’s her problem. She wonders if he realizes that he’s asking her for so much—for the rest of her life, basically. Ele always thought she would be a normal, sensible girl. Date a few boys in high school, leave them behind to go have fun in college, meet her husband when she’s twenty-something and finally settle down. She never thought she’d meet her soulmate when she was sixteen. That, as a teenager, she would be thrust into something that feels so… so serious, and so permanent.  
  
Maybe Edoardo isn’t thinking about any of this at all. Maybe he just wants Ele for now, for a year, temporarily. The fact that she doesn’t know makes her want to scream.  
  
Eleonora sighs, turning her pen around and drawing a long, single line across her wrist. _I’m thinking about you,_ she thinks as she does it, as if he might hear her. She waits a minute, two minutes, but her phone stays quiet and nothing appears on her skin, so she rolls back onto her stomach and pulls her books towards her, determined to think of something else.  
  
-  
  
**FRIDAY, JANUARY 25  
21:16**  
  
The fact that so many people can fit into her apartment is astounding to Eleonora. Honestly, she’s a little worried about this party turning into a fire hazard. Even though Silvia had promised to keep the numbers down, Ele had started to get suspicious about the scope of this soirée when the blonde and Eva had arrived with three cardboard boxes full of wine and liquor. When Marti and Nico had arrived shortly after with five twenty-four packs of beer, she had finally understood: she was meant to be hosting a rager.  
  
She’d put Elia in charge of the music, hoping the responsibility might encourage him to not get so trashed that he’d end up asleep on her floor for the night. Gio and Marti had helped her push all of the living room furniture up against the walls to create room for a makeshift dance floor, and her dining room table had been co-opted for all manner of drinking games.  
  
Now, as Ele weaves from one room to another, checking that nobody is in Filo’s room or hers, she is sure she doesn’t recognize half of the people here. But people seem to be having a good time, nobody has set anything on fire, and there appears to be no structural damage to her apartment (yet), so Eleonora thinks the party is a rousing success so far.  
  
She’s leaning against the wall on the edge of a mass of dancing bodies in the living room, watching Luchino do card tricks to try to catch Silvia’s attention, when the buzzer rings and people on the dance floor start to cheer. Before anybody can let in a stranger, Ele rushes over to the intercom and presses the button.  
  
“Who is it?” she half-yells over the din of music and laughter. There’s a garbled answer that she can’t hear. “ _Who?_ ”  
  
“Fede!” shouts the voice over the intercom, and Ele feels her cheeks warm. She presses the button to let them in and, hesitating only briefly, reaches up to pull the elastic out of her hair so it falls around her face. She fiddles with the sleeves of her sweater briefly before there’s a knock on the door, and she opens it to find Fede. He raises an eyebrow and nods at her before entering. She watches the line of them go past: Fede, Rocco Martucci, Chicco, Nathan, the one whose name she’s pretty sure she’s never heard before—  
  
But no Edoardo.  
  
It’s dumb to be disappointed, she thinks, but she is anyway. Watching his friends push through the crowds of people to grab drinks in the kitchen, she wonders where he could be tonight, if not with his usual group. _With another girl?_ her brain supplies, and Ele frowns. She pulls out her phone and opens up her chat with him.  
  
**Eleonora Sava:** Where are you?  
  
When he doesn’t read it after a few moments, Eleonora forces her way into the kitchen to pour herself a giant glass of red wine, and then escapes onto the veranda. It’s cold outside, and most of the partygoers have chosen to stay cozy indoors. Eva and Martino are the only two out here, their heads leaning towards each other as they converse quietly. Martino has a joint in one hand and is exhaling slowly when Ele joins them.  
  
“Federico is here,” she tells Eva, her voice grumpy even to her own ears. Eva nods.  
  
“Avoiding Edoardo?” her friend asks, and Martino smirks, flicking the joint and offering it to Ele. She waves a hand to turn it down and takes a long sip of wine.  
  
“No, he’s… He didn’t come.”  
  
Eva raises an eyebrow. “Edoardo Incanti missing an opportunity to be in your presence?” She gives Ele a long, hard look, tilting her head to one side so her hair spills over her shoulder. “Did something happen?”  
  
Ele avoids her eyes. They may not have known each other for that long, but Eva always has a way of being able to see through Ele’s bullshit. “No, not really.”  
  
Eva clicks her tongue. “All right.”  
  
“Very convincing,” Martino chimes in, taking another drag. Ele wrinkles her nose at him.  
  
“We…” she starts, and comes up at a loss for words. “I think I may have finally chased him off,” she admits, voice quiet. It’s the thing she’s been afraid to even think all day. That she’s finally in, ready for whatever this is, and he’s decided she’s no longer worth the hassle.  
  
Eva laughs, clear and loud as a bell in the cold night air. “I really, really doubt that, Ele,” she says, taking a sip of her own drink.  
  
“Really, I— I think he might be over it.” Horrifyingly, Ele can feel tears welling up at the corners of her eyes. Maybe it’s too dark to see them out here, with just the string lights illuminating the veranda. She takes a big gulp of wine to get rid of the lump in her throat, swallowing hard.  
  
“And you don’t want him to be over it?” Eva asks astutely. Inside, one song fades into another and the crowd cheers and starts to sing along loudly. Ele doesn’t answer, and Eva smirks at her. “Well, Miss Sava, I can hardly believe!”  
  
“How the mighty have fallen,” Martino giggles. Eleonora glares at both of them.  
  
“Don’t make fun of me,” she sniffs, staring at her glass of wine. “Or I’ll kick you both out.”  
  
“Harsh,” Martino says, and Eva laughs.  
  
“Ele,” she says comfortingly, and Eleonora looks up. Her friend’s eyes are soft, and she’s got a tiny smile on her face “Do you know that Fede told me Edo hasn’t been with anyone since he asked you out in May?”  
  
It’s like the noise of the party fades out, leaving only the sounds of passing traffic and Eleonora’s own heartbeat pulsing in her ears. She clears her throat. “I didn’t.”  
  
“I doubt he’d get over that in a few days, okay?”  
  
“Trust me,” Martino butts in, exhaling smoke through his nose and mouth simultaneously. “If an eighteen-year-old dude who looks like Edoardo Incanti gives up getting laid for eight months, he’s _deep_ in it.”  
  
Eleonora thinks about that statement while she drains the rest of her glass of wine before slamming it on the table a little harder than necessary. “I’ll be right back,” she tells Eva, who waves her away.  
  
On her way inside, she checks her phone. He still hasn’t seen her text.  
  
She finds the Villa Boys in her dining room. Rocco and Nathan have been pulled into some inexplicably complicated drinking game around the table with Gio and Elia—leaving Ele to wonder who, exactly, is now DJ-ing. In one corner, she can see Fede and Chicco, beers in hand and chatting. The wine in her bloodstream gives her the courage to lift her chin, straighten up, and march right over to them.  
  
“Hi, I was wondering—”  
  
“Packing tape!” Chicco croons, raising his arms up in greeting. Eleonora blinks and, as one of his arms falls around her shoulders, gives him a confused look.  
  
“I’m sorry, what?”  
  
“You don’t remember?” he asks. Ele has to wonder how he’s this toasted when he’d only arrived, like, twenty minutes ago. Fede rolls his eyes and pushes Chicco’s arm off of Ele’s shoulder with an apologetic look.  
  
“You may have earned yourself a nickname among the boys when you said, ah, what was it—” Fede makes a considering face.  
  
“—in middle school they ripped off the two hairs on your dick with packing tape!” Chicco finishes, with the air of someone reciting an epic poem. Ele thinks he might have put it into iambic pentameter. She blushes and looks down at the ground, suddenly incapable of remembering why she came over here in the first place.  
  
“Who would have thought that that savage young lady was our sweet Edoardo’s soulmate,” Chicco continues, a hand over his heart. He takes a big swig of beer and burps.  
  
“Well, Edo might have thought,” says Rocco, as he joins their circle, looping an arm over Chicco’s shoulders. “From day one, it was Eleonora this, green eyes that, guys, when will she like me ba—”  
  
“All right, all right,” Fede says, shoving the cackling pair of boys away. “Did you need something?” he asks, looking down his nose at Ele. She isn’t sure if he likes her very much. Then again, if she were Edoardo’s best friend, she might not like herself very much, either.  
  
“Where’s Edoardo?” she asks bluntly, and he laughs a little, bringing his beer bottle to his lips.  
  
“You care?”  
  
“Can you just tell me?”  
  
“I don’t know, he just said he couldn’t come.” Fede looks her up and down, and Ele crosses her arms, glaring back at him. “Look, I get that the universe has chosen you for him or whatever, but Edo is my brother,” Fede says. “And he doesn’t deserve to be treated like shit.” His tone is nice enough, but she is perceptive enough to hear the threat underlying it all.  
  
Eleonora isn’t sure what to say to that, so she nods and heads back to the veranda, resisting the urge to check her phone the whole way.  
  
-  
  
**FRIDAY, JANUARY 25  
23:49**  
  
Eleonora kicks everybody out at 11:30, when her elderly neighbor calls and says, very kindly, that if they do not shut the fuck up she’ll be calling the police. Everyone seems to be migrating to a nearby wine bar, and Silvia, one too many shots of vodka in, tries to drag Ele out the door with her. Ele only manages to resist by pushing Sana into the blonde’s arms and retreating into the bathroom, where she waits until the sound of retreating voices goes quiet.  
  
Now it’s just Eleonora, her silent apartment, approximately three thousand recyclables that need to be collected, and a living room filled with askew furniture. She’s flopped on the couch, legs draped over one arm, contemplating whether or not to try to move their furniture back in place now or just wait for Filo to come back on Sunday to help, when her phone buzzes with a text. When she sees who it’s from, goosebumps erupt on her skin.  
  
**Edoardo Incanti:** Sorry, I was at a family thing  
**Edoardo Incanti:** Everything okay?  
**Eleonora Sava:** Yes  
**Eleonora Sava:** Just cleaning up the wreckage of this party  
  
Ele bites her lip, her phone held aloft, and types out another message. She deletes it, holds her breath for a moment, then types it out again. Deletes it one more time, then drops her phone on her face. It clatters to the ground and Ele contorts herself to reach it, typing out the message one more time and sending it before she can drive herself any crazier.  
  
**Eleonora Sava:** Come over and help me?  
**Edoardo Incanti:** Really?  
**Eleonora Sava:** Only if you want to  
**Edoardo Incanti:** I’ll be there in ten  
  
Throwing her phone to the chair across the room, Eleonora rolls off the couch and onto the floor, trying to focus only on the feeling of cool tile floor against her fingertips and not the roiling, crashing waves of panic and _something_ in her stomach. This must be what it feels like to have an out-of-body experience, because she can’t imagine herself, Eleonora Sava, local plant mom and noted homebody, inviting _any_ boy, let alone _Edoardo Incanti_ , over to her apartment near midnight.  
  
She’s losing her mind. She’s unrecognizable to herself.. She’s… _excited_. To see him, to hear his voice.  
  
If she’s losing her mind, it’s definitely his fault.  
  
After she spends several moments hovering on the brink of hyperventilation, Eleonora picks herself up and heads to the kitchen in search of trash bags. On her way, her reflection in the hall mirror catches her attention. She stares at herself for a moment—the oversized sweater, sleeves falling past her hands; the feet in their mismatched socks; the lipstick she’d chosen for tonight, a dark oxblood. Resisting the urge to turn to one side, then the other, she instead just tugs on the hem of her sweater, appreciating its formlessness, the way it makes it impossible to discern any shape underneath.  
  
She’s slowly moving through the living room and tossing cans and plastic cups into a bag when the intercom rings. Her heart flutters the slightest bit as she presses the button to let him in, pulse point jumping in her neck. When she opens her apartment door, Edoardo is already there, shoulders hunched. He’s dressed in jeans and a button-down, pushing the hood of his sweatshirt off of his curls. “Hey,” he says, following her inside. He looks almost surprised to find Eleonora in her own apartment, his eyes apprehensive, no smile on his face.  
  
Ele closes the door behind him and rests her back against it. They stare at each other for a few seconds, the air weaving itself tense between them—she could apologize for Tuesday, right now, or surge forward and touch him.  
  
Instead, she holds out a trash bag. He stares at it for a beat, then another, then laughs and scrubs a hand over his face before taking it and shaking it open. “You really invited me here to help you clean up trash,” he says, a note of wonder in his voice. He steps further into the living room, picking up the nearest empty beer bottle and dropping it into his bag.  
  
“That’s what I said,” Ele responds, slowly circling to the other side of the living room. The living room is filled with the almost-musical clinking of cans and glass bottles as they collect the debris of the party. “What else would I have meant?”  
  
“Honestly, Ele, I don’t think I have any idea what the fuck you’re thinking anymore.” Ele sucks in a quick breath, but when she glances over at him, he’s not looking at her. He’s stopped to examine a bookshelf, filled with family pictures and knick-knacks and a truly embarrassing collection of romance novels. “I need to stop trying to guess.”  
  
This is her chance, she thinks. To apologize for Tuesday, or maybe even more than Tuesday. To get some of these feelings, which feel twisted and complicated and like shackles around her ankles, off of her chest. But watching him pick up a panda figurine Filo had gotten her at the zoo years ago and toy with it gently, then place it down and run his fingers over the spines of the books behind it, Ele thinks, for the first time, _maybe I’m not good for him._ She thinks of Fede saying _he doesn’t deserve to be treated like shit_ , and a small, mean voice in her head answers, _that’s all you’ve ever done—treat him like shit_. How can she even start to apologize for months of careless, flippant judgments? Where does one even begin?  
  
Ele doesn’t know. She doesn’t know if she even needs to apologize for cruel things she said, when she believed them one hundred percent when she was saying them.  
  
So she takes her tortured, entangled feelings and pulls them close to her chest again, where he can’t quite see them yet. Instead, she says, “Your friends were all here tonight.” _Where were you?_ She’s too shy to ask, but knows he’ll understand anyway. He has that annoying knack for reading her.  
  
“My grandma’s birthday was a few days ago,” he says, in answer to her silent question, pulling a romance novel with a borderline-pornographic cover illustration off the bookcase and raising an eyebrow. “My dad and I took her out to celebrate.” He flips over the book and starts reading the description on the back.  
  
“Please don’t read that.”  
  
He raises an eyebrow at her, before laughing under his breath and returning it. “My mom used to love these,” he says, going back to collecting trash.  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Yeah, there’s a whole box of them in our attic somewhere. I read them all when I was, like, fifteen.”  
  
Ele laughs at that, trying hard to picture a younger, skinnier Edo surrounded by erotica books in various shades of pink. “Now I see where your romantic side comes from,” she says, blushing and regretting the comment almost immediately. They’ve both circled the perimeter of the living room and are now heading towards each other, their respective collections converging.  
  
“Will your parents be home soon?” he asks. Clink, goes another bottle into his almost-full bag.  
  
“No, I… they don’t live here. It’s just me and Filippo.”  
  
Tying off the top of his bag in a knot, he reaches out to take hers and do the same. “Where are they?”  
  
Ele forces herself to shrug, as if it’s no big deal. “My dad lives in Milan, but I only talk to him like once a year, now.” _Keep it casual_ , she thinks. “And my mom… she comes home once a month or so. She lives with her boyfriend in Padua.”  
  
“And your brother?”  
  
“What about him?”  
  
“Where is he?”  
  
“Ah, at some guy’s place for the weekend.”  
  
Edoardo looks at her, his face unreadable. In the dim lighting of the living room, Ele can’t tell if his expression has changed at all, knowing that she’d invited him here, in the middle of the night, with nobody else around. She knows what it looks like, even if she hadn’t intended it that way. Or maybe she had. Around him, her thoughts became so confusing, her motivations impossible to track from point A to point B. She wants him close and is insistent on keeping him at arms length, all at the same time.  
  
She wonders if he can tell, just from looking at her, how many thoughts are racing through her mind. Sometimes it feels like he can.  
  
He breaks eye contact first, collecting up their trash bags and placing them by the door. His curly head swivels this way and that, and Eleonora wonders what he sees, looking around her home. If he can piece together anything about her based on the stack of mail left by the door, the rows of shoes in the hall, the paintings she’d picked out to hang on the walls. “There’s a lot fewer plants than I would have imagined,” he says finally, and Ele laughs.  
  
“They’re mostly out there,” she replies, nodding her head towards the closed doors out to the veranda. He tilts his head in that direction and, in a few long strides, is pushing the doors open, letting in the cold night air.  
  
“This rivals the greenhouse, I think,” he says, once Eleonora follows him outside and flips on the string lights so they can see.  
  
“I wish.” The temperature has dropped as the night has deepened, and she pulls her sweater more tightly around her, crossing her arms. He must notice, because he steps closer to her, so her shoulder is touching his arm. Warmth seeps slowly into her skin, spreading slowly outwards from the point of contact. She shivers, and hopes he thinks it’s from the cold.  
  
“I like the lights,” he adds, and when Ele looks up at him, he’s staring up at them, or maybe the deep, purple-navy sky. “Shouldn’t they be pink, though?”  
  
She laughs, still looking up at him, and when he meets her gaze he’s smiling too. “We’re not fancy enough for pink lights, here.”  
  
“Is this your favorite place?” he asks, and Ele blinks.  
  
“One of them,” she says, voice half-stuck in her throat. _Do you like it?_  
  
He makes an aborted move towards her, like he wanted to reach for her but stopped himself at the last minute. Eleonora’s wrists and hands ache, strangely, as if begging her to reach out for him.  
  
“Ele,” he says, in that voice reserved only for her. “Are you going to tell me what I’m doing here?”  
  
She swallows, looking out across the street to the apartment building across the way. There’s a few lights still on, here and there. They aren’t the only people awake in Rome, even though it feels that way right now. “Looking at my plants?” she tries, but it feels wrong, deceitful, almost immediately. Ele steels herself and looks back at him, his dark eyes, his indecipherable expression. “No, I…” She searches for the words, but it’s hard when he’s close, so close, and staring at her like maybe he already knows what she’s going to say. “I feel bad about… the things I said, in your car.” His eyebrows jump just the tinest amount, and Ele’s heartbeat thunders in her ears. “I didn’t mean that I… I mean, I _did_ mean them, but I was—” She breaks off, frustrated with herself. “Fuck, I’m so bad at this.”  
  
He looks confused, maybe, and a little amused, which is better, Eleonora supposes, than mad, or hurt. “Bad at what?”  
  
“At… you know.” She motions between them awkwardly. “Talking about how… about my _feelings_.” It sounds so trite, out loud, but he’s smiling a little, now, and brings up a hand to brush her hair behind her ear. On his wrist, she can see the faint remains of the line she drew on her own last night.  
  
“Are these all your plants?” he asks. Eleonora blinks, confused.  
  
“What?”  
  
“You wanted me to see your plants,” he says slowly, dropping his hand and looking around. “Is this all of them?” He’s giving her an out, Ele realizes. She closes her eyes and wonders at how it could be possible to be _so_ wrong about a person.  
  
“I— no. It’s too cold outside for some right now, so they’re in my room.”  
  
“Can I see?” Ele’s eyes snap open. He’s looking at her expectantly.  
  
“You want to see my room?” Her voice is strangely high-pitched.  
  
He shrugs casually, as if he’s not asking her to show him her most private sanctuary. Ele tries to remember, as quickly as possible, if she’d left any bras hanging on door handles or something equally embarrassing laying around. “I’ve kind of wondered what it might look like.”  
  
The idea of Edoardo Incanti imagining her room, or her _in_ her room, or _them_ in her room—she isn’t even going to touch that comment. Instead, Ele says, “Um, sure,” and leads him inside, pausing just outside her closed door. She scratches at her neck awkwardly and stares at the door handle.  
  
“Should we knock?” Edoardo whispers, joking, and Ele coughs.  
  
“Just trying to… remember if I put away the giant dartboard with the picture of your face attached,” she says, and he laughs loud enough to wake up the neighbors. It makes her feel a little braver.  
  
Before she opens the door, Ele gives him a long look. “Don’t… touch anything, though.”  
  
He raises his right hand in a mock oath. “I swear it.”  
  
Her room is dim, lit only by one lamp in the corner and whatever light from the moon and streetlights manages to filter in through her curtains. She tries to imagine it from the perspective of somebody who has never seen it—the pictures on the walls, the handmade water bottle-planters she’d made for succulents one slow summer day hanging from the ceiling—but gets too lost in the familiarities of her own space. Just being in here relaxes her, and even the foreign presence of Edoardo Incanti can’t disrupt the sense of peace that overtakes her here, laid on top of her like a heavy blanket.  
  
She leans against her own desk and watches him circle her room, hands held behind his back as if in ultra-observance of her no touching rule. _What do you think,_ she finds herself wanting to ask, _of the room, the plants, of me?_  
  
He pauses at her bookshelf, staring at a picture of her and Filo. She must have been four or five, and is smearing paint on her brother’s face, a huge laugh on her chubby baby face. Eleonora can’t see his expression from here but realizes, with a pang, that she doesn’t need to. If she could see him, she knows, he’d have a small smile on his face, and if his hands weren’t behind his back at her request, he might reach out and touch the frame, or brush his thumb over the glass.  
  
Somehow she knows him that well now. In the end, it’s not just that. It’s that he came over at midnight even though he could be mad at her. That he read a box full of romance novels to feel connected to his mom. That he stole the key to a greenhouse to make her smile. That, even in her bedroom, in the dark, his hands are clasped behind his back, not touching, because she asked him not to.  
  
Eleonora approaches him so silently that Edoardo starts when he turns around and finds her just in front of him, her socked toes touching the tips of his sneakers. His chest is broad and warm when she rests her palms on it and pushes, just hard enough that the backs of his knees hit her bed and he sits on it, legs spread. She steps into the space between his knees, hands still on his chest, and they’re almost eye-level now, her standing and him sitting. His eyes are wide, and Eleonora feels a small surge of pride that she’s actually managed to surprise him, unsettle him, when all these months she’s felt like the one on shifting ground.  
  
As her hands slide up from his chest to his neck, his reach up to hold her waist. “You said you wouldn’t touch,” Ele whispers, brushing her fingertips against the rogue curl on his forehead. Edo groans, a dimple appearing in one cheek as he half-smiles.  
  
“I think you’re actually, literally trying to kill me,” he says, voice rough, as he drops his hands, resting them behind him so he’s leaning backwards, face pushed up into her hands. His knees close on either side of her hips, holding her in place. Ele watches his fingers clench in her sheets and feels emboldened.  
  
“Honestly,” Ele replies, trailing her hand up over his hair, down along the shell of his ear, and landing on his cheek, “I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing.”  
  
His face is mostly cast in shadows, but he’s close enough that Eleonora can see him perfectly anyway. She lets herself examine him in a way she never has before, always too scared of looking at him too long, like it might flip a switch inside of her. Her thumb grazes over the gentle slope of an eyebrow, the crooked length of his nose. She pauses before she reaches his lips, watching his eyes ping between her eyes and her lips, over and over again, endlessly. She can feel his breath puffing against the pad of her thumb, his knees straining against her hips.  
  
“Eleonora,” he says. _Pleads_.  
  
There’s nobody here to watch them. It feels like there’s nobody else in the entire world.  
  
Ele catches his lips with hers, and he kisses her back so instantaneously that in a week, a month, a year, she won’t be able to remember who kissed who first. His hands leave her sheets and he leans all the way into her, each hand sliding from her ribs to her back, deliciously slow, before he wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her closer, as close as possible. Her hand slides into those damn curls, soft between her fingers, and she pulls his bottom lip between hers, her mind going blissfully blank.  
  
It’s easier to be honest now, with his arms wrapped around her and his mouth opening up under hers, and admit to herself that’s she’s pictured this. She’s imagined it, and this is—nothing like she’s imagined, over this past week and even further back. Last Halloween, in Manchester, she’d been wasted and stumbled back to her dorm, slipped under her comforter and stared at his Instagram and wondered what it would be like to touch him, to kiss him. She’d thought about watching him kiss Silvia at Fede’s birthday party, sensual and hungry, and shivered in her bed, imagined being the focus of his passion that way.  
  
Right now, Edoardo isn’t kissing her like he’s waited for it for months, messy and desperate. There’s little urgency in the way his hands rest on her back, gently pulling at the material of her sweater. Instead, he presses his lips to her cupid’s bow, the corner of her mouth, her jaw, slow, like he’s savoring it. Like he has all the time in the world to kiss her harder, to make her come apart if he wants. It makes Ele antsy, like she could crawl out of her own skin, and she whines in the back of her throat when his lips trail away from hers, suddenly desperate for more now that she’s here. Tightening her fingers in his hair, she uses her grip to pull his mouth back to hers, using both hands to fix his face in place as she kisses him slower, deeper.  
  
“Edo,” she moans, embarrassingly, when he pulls away from her mouth again, burying his face in her neck and mouthing at her throat. Her skin feels overheated and oversensitive, and she shudders when his teeth bite at her pulse point, before soothing the spot with his lips, soft. One of his hands pushes her sweater up the slightest bit, two fingers twisting in the belt loop of her jeans.  
  
“Jesus Christ, Ele,” he mutters against her mouth when she drags his lips to hers again. He’s losing his composure, his kisses becoming sloppier, and Ele wants to take notes on what drives him crazy, what makes him kiss her harder like this—nose pressed into her cheek, tongue finding hers. He fists a hand in her hair and stands, suddenly, towering over her but leaning down to keep their mouths connected. Stumbling slightly, he spins them and moves to push her down onto her bed—  
  
“Mmph,” Ele says, resisting with a gentle push at his chest. Their mouths separate with a loud _pop_ and she flushes, suddenly brought back to the present as he pants against her cheek, one hand sliding into the back pocket of her jeans. “We should probably stay… vertical.”  
  
“All my best moves are horizontal, though,” Edo replies, voice husky. She can tell he’s joking, but the thought—and his lips finding her earlobe and kissing her earring, lightly—still makes her knees shake.  
  
She pulls back, slightly, his hand slipping from her hair and coming to rest on her cheek, his thumb gently passing over the tip of her nose. His eyes are glassy and he looks a little dazed, blissed-out, but he’s smiling at her. It’s a new smile that she doesn’t think she’s seen before. Not like he’s seeing her for the first time, but like he’s found something new in her. There’s lipstick all over his mouth and chin and jaw, but it’s still the handsomest Eleonora has ever found him. _You did that,_ she thinks.  
  
He leans in to kiss her again but Ele brings a hand to his face and laughs. “You look ridiculous,” she says, thumbing over the lipstick stains she’d left behind. She’s sure her own lipstick is absolutely wrecked, too.  
  
“Don’t care,” he says, pressing a quick, chaste kiss to her mouth. “In fact, I may have dreamed about being covered in your lipstick once or twice—”  
  
“Oh my God.” Ele shoves at his chest in embarrassment. He wraps an arm around her shoulders before she can pull away and kisses her again, and again, and again. Ele lets him press her up against the wall next to her desk and slide a leg between hers and kiss her over and over, more rough this time, his mouth and his hands coaxing all manner of embarrassing whines and moans from Ele’s lips. He overwhelms her every sense—everything she can touch, taste, see, hear, smell is him, the woody scent of his cologne and the sound of his voice as he says her name.  
  
They kiss until her mouth is sore and her jaw aches, until he’s resting his forehead on the wall next to her head and exhaling through his nose and muttering, “I really need to get it together.” Eleonora raises an eyebrow and laughs, kissing his cheek before sliding out of his grip and padding down the hallway to the bathroom, in search of makeup wipes.  
  
She finds them underneath the sink and pulls one out before staring at herself in the mirror. “Absolutely wrecked” are the first words that come to mind upon seeing her reflection. Her lipstick has smudged over the entire lower half of her face, and she’s pretty sure there’s a hickey blooming on her throat. But Ele can’t help but find the girl in the mirror beautiful, with her electric green eyes and her pink cheeks, her mussed hair and swollen lips. She shivers and shakes herself from her reverie, pressing the makeup wipe to her skin to remove the remnants of her lipstick.  
  
That’s how Edoardo finds her, when he steps into the doorway of the bathroom and leans against the doorjamb. There’s a few inches of space between them and Eleonora tries to not let her anxiety and nerves flood into it. Instead, she hands him his own makeup wipe.  
  
As he cleans himself up, she reaches for some cotton pads and makeup remover. “Is it too soon for you to see me without makeup?” she asks, only half joking. He snorts and steps all the way into the bathroom, standing behind her, and wraps his arms around her shoulders.  
  
“You’re so pretty,” he mumbles as he kisses her cheek, and Ele blushes, looking down at the sink.  
  
“You’re so… touchy,” she replies, cringing a little at herself. Edo laughs and she can feel it vibrating throughout her whole body.  
  
“Does it bother you?” Another kiss, this time to her temple.  
  
Ele hesitates. “No.” She smiles to herself, still looking down. “I’m just not used to it.”  
  
Arms still around her, one of his hands brushes against her chin, urging her to look up. Ele picks her head up, meeting his gaze in the mirror. He looks so big, with her head almost fitting under his chin and his long arms completely enveloping her. “Thank you,” he whispers in her ear, still holding eye contact in the mirror. Ele wrinkles her nose.  
  
“What for?”  
  
“For being honest,” he says, and he smiles at her. Warmth suffuses her entire body, and she watches her own cheeks turn pink. She ducks her head again, too overwhelmed with feelings for him to look at him any longer. He reaches down to take one of her hands in his and intertwine their fingers. Eleonora is so completely wrapped up in him that she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to disentangle herself, tonight or ever.  
  
”Tell me what you’re thinking?” he asks. His face is pressed into her neck, voice a bit muffled by her hair.  
  
She hesitates. There’s a thousand things she could say. That she regrets not doing this sooner. That she’s terrified she’ll ruin it, somehow. That he’s a really good kisser. That she still isn’t sure, after all of this, that the soulmate thing makes any sense to her.  
  
”You’re so different from what I thought,” she settles on, squeezing his hand and leaning back into him, resting her head on his chest. _I like you so much,_ is what she really means. She hopes he understands. She thinks that he might.  
  
Ele lets him hug her for a few more long minutes before wriggling out of his arms to finish washing her face and to brush her teeth. He watches her the whole time and Ele finds that she doesn’t mind it very much at all.  
  
”I should get going,” he says when she’s finished and he’s following her back up the hallway to her bedroom. He checks the time on his phone and laughs. “God, we made out for like an hour.”  
  
Ele blushes and pauses only for a moment before saying, “Stay.”  
  
Edoardo’s eyebrows shoot up. “Really?”  
  
Ele shrugs. “Sure. _Just_ to sleep,” she adds, and he clutches his chest as if wounded. She catches a glimpse of the line she left on his wrist just last night. It feels like an eternity ago.  
  
”Is horizontal sleeping allowed or will I be forced to sleep standing up?”  
  
He’s standing so close and leaning over her and laughing, and Eleonora’s heart is absolutely bursting. She pushes up onto her toes and kisses him quickly, rewarded with an adorable shocked face in return. “Horizontal sleeping allowed,” she says, and she takes his hand, leading him into her room.  
  
-  
  
**SATURDAY, JANUARY 26  
10:31**  
  
Edoardo is still sleeping when Eleonora rouses, momentarily extremely confused by the entire “not waking up alone” situation. She has never shared a bed with a guy before. Her eyes open to a room so filled with sunlight that she can’t believe she slept this late at all. Edo is on his side, curled towards her and breathing slowly, one arm resting around her waist.  
  
He looks younger asleep. His hair is an absolute mess, as if it doubled twice in size as they slept. Eleonora pets it fondly, pressing the strands between two fingers and smiling. She wonders, distantly, if she should feel more freaked out by this situation. But she has a sneaking suspicion that last night is one she’ll remember for years, maybe one that she’ll use to divide up time. Before and After. For now, she at least can’t imagine experiencing it and not feeling… different. Lighter.  
  
She lets herself be creepy for exactly one minute and trace her fingers lightly over Edo’s mouth, his nose, his jaw before she forces herself to stop and swings her legs over the side of the mattress, sliding out from under his arm carefully.  
  
There’s hardly any food in the kitchen—in fact, she suspects that some rogue party-goers may have raided her fridge last night, because there was definitely more in there yesterday. Still, Ele thinks there’s enough to make a passable breakfast, so she gathers up eggs and cheese and vegetables and spreads them out on the counter before beginning the hunt for a frying pan.  
  
She never gets around to finding it, though, because her tranquil morning is interrupted by Edoardo Incanti grabbing her from behind, having approached as silently as an assassin. Eleonora jumps about three feet in the air and lets out a weird half-shriek, one hand coming up to rest on her chest.  
  
“Good morning to you, too.”  
  
“You _scared_ me,” Ele says, heart still racing. When she looks up at Edo, he still looks half-asleep and a little grumpy. It’s adorable.  
  
“What are you doing?” he asks, like she’s in the wrong here.  
  
“Making us breakfast?”  
  
“No,” he says, reeling her in with one long arm and pulling her out of the kitchen, frog-marching her back to the bedroom. He’s wearing boxers and one of Filippo’s t-shirts, the biggest one she could find in her brother’s dresser. “You’re ruining my first chance to wake up with my girlfriend, is what you’re doing—”  
  
He all but picks her up and tosses her back onto the bed. Eleonora laughs as he throws himself back into bed with her, pulling the covers back up over them and punching his pillow into place. “Now pretend to be asleep,” he says, and Ele rolls her eyes but obliges.  
  
She waits for a few moments before Edoardo rolls over on top of her, the pleasant weight of his body pressing Ele into the mattress, his lips finding hers. She wraps her arms around his neck as he licks into her mouth, kissing her languidly.  
  
“Good morning, Eleonora,” he whispers against her jaw once he pulls back. She feels winded, and opening her eyes, seeing him smiling down at her, his crazy morning hair all backlit by the sunlight streaming in through the window, doesn’t help.  
  
“Girlfriend?” she asks, sinking her hands into his hair as he rolls off of her slightly, kissing her collarbone where her sleep shirt has fallen aside.  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“Girlfriend,” she whispers again, pulling his face up so they’re eye-to-eye. He kisses her cheek. “You called me your girlfriend.”  
  
He hums against her skin. “Would you prefer soulmate?”  
  
Eleonora fists her hand in his hair and tugs, just slightly. He laughs. “I didn’t think so.”  
  
“Girlfriend is good,” she whispers, and he smiles at her again, bright as the morning sun outside. They lay in silence as Edoardo contents himself with playing with her hair, his eyes slowly losing their glassy, just-woke-up look.  
  
After a while, Ele pokes him in the side. “Can I make you breakfast now?”  
  
“Let me take you somewhere,” he replies, pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth. Ele laughs.  
  
“I have food here, though.”  
  
“I’m begging you,” he says. His tone is exaggerated, but she doesn’t think the sentiment is a joke. “I’ve wanted to take you out for so long, Ele, please.”  
  
She’s starting to fear that she can’t contain all this emotion he inspires within her—that, at some point, she’ll need to start putting into words how he makes her feel, or else it will all leak out. “Where do you want to take me?” she asks quietly. His face is so close to hers, and he’s a little cross-eyed, trying to stare at her anyway.  
  
“Anywhere,” he says, kissing her one more time, just because he can. “As long as you’re there, I’m good.”


End file.
